Senate Communications Hearing Likely to Eye Thune IIJA Funding Probe, Other Broadband Issues
A Tuesday Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing on implementation of broadband funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other recent measures is likely to include a heavy focus on GOP leaders’ concerns about federal agencies’ oversight of those disbursals, lawmakers and other officials told us. There also may be discussion about other pressing issues, including recent pushes to include additional money for the FCC’s Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program in a FY 2023 appropriations omnibus package (see 2212070068) and to enact legislation that ensures broadband funding from IIJA and the American Rescue Plan Act doesn’t count as taxable income, observers said.
The hearing, which will begin at 10 a.m. in 253 Russell, will include testimony from NCTA CEO Michael Powell and USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter. Also testifying: Connect New Mexico Council interim Chair Kimball Sekaquaptewa and National Digital Inclusion Alliance Executive Director Angela Siefer, the Senate Commerce Committee said.
“There’s an incredible investment that’s been made across America and from an oversight perspective it’s important to ensure that ISPs and other communication entities are doing all they can to connect every corner of America,” said Senate Communications Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M. “There’s a lot of interest from me in what the FCC recently rolled out” in its Nov. 23 order requiring all affordable connectivity program providers to submit annual data on price, plan coverage and characteristics of their service to ACP-enrolled households. An accompanying NPRM will seek comment on revising the data collection rules and whether the FCC should seek more granulated data on enrollment and the digital divide (see 2211230074).
NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield expects the hearing will “tee up some of the issues that cover the whole” broadband ecosystem that aren’t directly tied to disbursing the IIJA money. “People get so focused on building the infrastructure, what that looks like, how it works” in each of the participating federal agencies, she said in an interview: “This feels like a way to step back and ask” questions “aside from building these networks. How do we maintain these networks? How do we make sure they’re affordable? How do we make sure they’re sustainable so that whatever investments “we’re putting in are good” ones that “actually do ensure that we’re creating networks that folks can utilize and connect to?”
An aide to Senate Communications ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., confirmed he will “definitely” focus on his broadband oversight concerns during the Tuesday hearing. Thune began work last week to review all federal broadband funding programs in a bid to hold executive branch agencies accountable for their disbursals (see 2212060067). More than 30 industry entities received letters from Thune about the oversight probe, including CTIA, NCTA, NTCA and WIA, lobbyists said.
Thune “and I may share some areas of interest in ensuring that the investment” from IIJA and other bills “makes its way to fruition to areas across America,” Lujan said: “It’s going to be critically important” that everyone in the U.S. gets “the connection that they deserve and that” broadband programs “get deployed” effectively. “Participating entities” need to “fully maximize connectivity and I don’t want to see anyone hiding behind rules that are yet to be developed” as a way to explain “why they can’t connect a community or a small business or a family,” he said.
NTCA is “going to be working through our responses to” Thune’s inquiry, Bloomfield said. “What he’s teed up is something that’s commonsense,” including how federal agencies are “coordinating” on issues like what data on the FCC’s new broadband coverage maps requires fixing. “There’s a lot of work in this space” that will be needed “to ensure that we’re not spending a lot of these federal resources duplicating efforts,” she said: It may also provide further motivation to Congress to push the FCC to act on some of the Connect America Fund, Alternative Connect American Cost Model and other USF mechanisms.
It's important to remember that the $65 billion in broadband money in IIJA wasn’t entirely allocated to fund deployment, said Free Press Vice President-Policy Matt Wood: It also included money for the FCC’s ACP program and digital equity efforts, so it will be important to watch if Thune intends to confine his inquiry to just ensuring disbursals of deployment money don’t go to overbuilding. “My antenna are definitely up” on those issues,” Wood said.