Acting NTIA Administrator Meredith Baker will ask Congress to aut...
Acting NTIA Administrator Meredith Baker will ask Congress to authorize up to $7 million “for flexibility” to send extra converter coupons paid for with money reclaimed from expired vouchers, when she testifies Tuesday to the House Telecom Subcommittee, an…
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NTIA spokesman said late Friday. NTIA will seek authority to use money already appropriated to the agency for other programs under the DTV Transition and Public Safety Act, he said. NTIA expects to release any day final rules extending coupon eligibility to nursing-home residents and households getting mail at post-office boxes, he said. The funding authorization that NTIA seeks is “virtually identical to flexibility Congress recently gave NTIA to use available balances from low-power conversion program for DTV consumer education,” he said. “Any unused funds will be returned to the Treasury, and under no circumstance will the coupon program spend more than the $1.5 billion” allocated by law, he said. The subcommittee Friday released a witness list for the Tuesday hearing: FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; NTIA Acting Administrator Meredith Baker; Mark Goldstein, director, physical infrastructure issues, Government Accountability Office; Tom Romeo, director, global federal services, IBM; NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow; Chris Murray, senior counsel, Consumers Union; Andrew Setos, engineering president, Fox Group; John Kittleman, general manager KRGV-TV News Channel 5 and KRGV-DT 5.2 LATV; David Candelaria, vice president, Entravision Communications; NAB President David Rehr; Christopher McLean, executive director, Consumer Electronic Retailers Coalition; and Connie Book, associate professor, Elon University School of Communications.