Adoption Is Focus of NTIA Broadband Programs: Davidson

NTIA is "really focused on adoption" throughout all of its broadband programs, said Administrator Alan Davidson during Monday’s State of the Net Conference. “We’ve been given resources to do things that we’ve never had the chance to do,” Davidson said, pointing to closing the digital divide, spectrum policy and other ongoing NTIA initiatives. NTIA and FCC coordination on spectrum is "key," Davidson said. It's "important" for NTIA to "be thinking about this broad range of competitiveness for the U.S."

Congress gave NTIA "a very clear answer" on how to define broadband speeds for its programs, Davidson said, citing the requirement that households without 25/3 Mbps speeds are prioritized in the broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. The law is "pretty clear" that NTIA must be technologically neutral in its programs, he added.

The environment is "an issue that will define our shared future," said FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks during a virtual keynote. "It starts with addressing our industry's energy consumption," Starks said, citing the "densification and increased usage associated with advanced networks like 5G." Starks said nearly 20% of the world's greenhouse gases could come from the information and communications technology sector by the end of this decade. Advanced networks "also can have tremendous downstream benefits for the conservation of energy and other resources," he said. "We have long talked about the economic benefits of 5G," Starks said: "We must also put in the time, thought, and attention to generating the environmental benefits of 5G."

NTIA anticipates issuing a notice of funding opportunity for the BEAD and middle-mile programs “on or by May 16,” said Communications Policy Initiatives Director Russ Hanser. A notice for the agency’s digital equity programs is “very close … if not the same time” as its other notice, Hanser said. The programs will rely on the FCC’s forthcoming maps, said the Vernonburg Group CEO Paul Garnett, so “hopefully we’ll get to that point soon where we have a good data set that could be the basis for a lot of these funding mechanisms.” The FCC's maps "are essential" and "have been bad," Davidson said, noting the new maps will be "much better than what we had before" and "we're coordinating with [the FCC] closely on that."

The Treasury Department executed grant agreements with every state for the Capital Projects Fund, said the fund's director, Joseph Wender, noting states’ grant plans are under review. “We’re hoping for soon-ish,” Wender said. Some states have already received funding for administrative work, he said. Hanser noted NTIA will have a staff coordinator for each state to assist them with the agency’s programs.

Successful implementation of the infrastructure law “will depend on state, local, tribal, and territorial capacity to design the local projects in collaboration with community stakeholders,” said White House Chief Data Scientist Denice Ross. States are "as ready as they possibly can be" for the new programs, said Kathryn de Wit, project director-Pew Broadband Research Initiative: “There’s a lot of … complexity that states are trying to navigate right now.” The need for coordination at the state and local level “adds to [the] complexity of this,” Garnett said.

The digital divide “certainly remains,” said Broderick Johnson, Comcast executive vice president for public policy and for digital equity. An “awful lot of it is about adoption,” Johnson said, saying the infrastructure funding needs to be spent wisely to avoid “duplicative efforts.” Policymakers should consider barriers beyond affordability as they work to boost adoption, de Wit said. Connecting households that have access needs to include input from a diverse group of stakeholders to emphasize the reasons why households haven’t adopted broadband, de Wit said.