House Communications Seen Looking to 2019 Goals in Rural Broadband Hearing

A Tuesday House Communications Subcommittee hearing to re-examine proposals to improve rural broadband deployments appears aimed in part at looking at what lawmakers can do in the next Congress given the limited legislative work time left this year, communications sector officials and lobbyists said in interviews. House Communications aimed to revisit the broadband proposals after recent FCC and congressional efforts (see 1807130065). A House Commerce Committee GOP staff memo notes language from several bills House Communications reviewed in January made it into the Repack Airwaves Yielding Better Access for Users of Modern Services (Ray Baum's) Act FCC reauthorization and spectrum legislative package (HR-4986), which President Donald Trump signed into law as part of the $1.3 trillion FY 2018 omnibus spending bill (HR-1625). House Commerce also cleared other broadband legislation recently (see 1803230038 and 1807120063).

The window for Congress to enact new broadband legislation is “closing fast,” so the true focus of the House Communications hearing “has to be about looking forward” to 2019, said NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield. “It’s going to be extremely difficult to start an initiative at this point” in the Hill’s cycle, especially because the debate over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is causing “the oxygen to be sucked right out of the room” in the Senate for the next few months. “I think this is much more about what Congress can do next year and in upcoming years” on broadband deployments, said American Action Forum Director-Technology and Innovation Policy Will Rinehart.

“I think there is going to be a lot of talk about what is the art of the possible” on federal involvement in broadband this year both on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch, Bloomfield said. A telecom lobbyist cited impending negotiations to reconcile the House and Senate-passed versions of the 2018 Agriculture Improvement Act farm bill (HR-2) as the most viable current vehicle for enacting further broadband legislation this year. Both versions of HR-2 contained several broadband-related provisions (see 1806220056 and 1806290037).

House Communications is also likely to focus on alternatives to fiber-to-the-home broad (FTTH) and given planned testimony from Wireless ISP Association President Claude Aiken and Satellite Industry Association President Tom Stroup, Bloomfield and R Street Institute Technology Policy Manager Tom Struble separately said. “There’s going to be a lot of long-term thinking” on that, especially as a way of fulfilling demands for universal connectivity in areas where FTTH isn’t economically viable, Struble said.

House Communications should “support more flexible, shared, and lightly licensed use of under-utilized spectrum bands, which will unleash the power of fixed wireless economics,” Aiken said in his written testimony. He urged the FCC to maintain a “balanced” spectrum policy for the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band spectrum, saying the commission shouldn’t shift away from census-tract-sized licenses on the band. “This approach would allow a variety of business cases to thrive in this band, including rural broadband,” Aiken said.

Congress should likewise “consider the many positive attributes of satellite broadband,” Stroup said in his written testimony. “The nature of satellite's wide coverage ensures that all communities within the satellite's footprint receive the same quality of service, whether they are remote communities or big cities. Public policymakers should leverage terrestrial-style incentives with satellite’s geographically-independent cost structure to achieve universal communications services.” Satellite would be available “across a significant portion” of the U.S. “without the build out of additional infrastructure,” and “there is no additional cost to build out to rural and remote areas, only lost opportunity costs in more lucrative service areas,” Stroup said.

Rinehart said he will watch for testimony from local stakeholders since they could clarify “the problems that people at the local are actually facing.” Deere Chief Information Officer John May will focus on how broadband deployments help precision agriculture and other technologies. They “depend on the delivery of reliable broadband connections to farmers in the field,” May said in his written testimony. “The fact is, farmers need reliable internet access to capitalize on the great technological advancements that modern farm equipment offers.” House Commerce’s vote last week to advance the Precision Agriculture Connectivity Act (HR-4881) is “an important first step in getting the FCC and USDA to work more closely together to address the agricultural-broadband issue,” May said.

Midco Senior Director-Government Relations Justin Forde will urge Congress to mandate federal broadband funding for projects in unserved areas and to enact legislation to support future FCC spectrum auctions. The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and other past initiatives “have allowed funding to be used in places that already have broadband service,” Forde said in his written testimony. “Midco has been overbuilt with our own tax dollars in places like Mitchell, South Dakota, as have others in our region. We believe that scarce government resources should be targeted to those who will build out to areas that do not yet have access to all the benefits broadband provides.”

Jenni Word, chief nursing officer for the Enterprise, Oregon, Wallowa General Hospital, is to focus on the importance of rural broadband for telehealth services. “Increasingly, telehealth technology has enabled us to fill” health service gaps, particularly for patients in rural areas, Word said in her written testimony. She urges Congress to adopt legislation that would eliminate barriers to telemedicine services, including creating federal grant and loan programs to “help small rural providers make the investments needed to implement telehealth programs.”

Suzanne Coker-Craig, managing partner for CuriosiTees of Pinetops, North Carolina, will focus on the fight to build and keep the town’s municipal FTTH network amid the state’s debate over municipal broadband laws (see 1706290030 and 1806220046). “The solution to getting rural communities connected will not come from one-size fits all legislation,” she said in her written testimony. “It will not come from waiting for large providers to come to our communities. It will certainly not happen if state legislators continue to limit creative local interventions. The solution will come from the resilient local business and municipal government leaders who know their communities and know how to find creative pathways to solve difficult problems.”