NTIA released Friday its long-awaited plan for awarding $42.45 billion in BEAD program money, reversing much of what the Biden administration developed in the initial rules. Delaware, Louisiana and Nevada, which have completed state plans, will have to relaunch the process. Fiber will no longer get priority under the plan. NTIA called the guidance a “BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice,” rather than a new notice of funding opportunity.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is defending cuts to the agency’s workforce and other actions in written testimony ahead of the House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee’s planned Wednesday hearing on commission oversight. Carr also urges Congress again to restore the FCC’s lapsed auction authority, as House GOP leaders aimed to pass, as soon as Wednesday night, their One Big Beautiful Bill Act budget reconciliation package with spectrum language included. The House Appropriations Financial Services hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in 2358-A Rayburn.
HERSHEY, Pennsylvania -- FCC officials speaking Saturday at the FCBA's annual seminar expressed confidence that the agency will regain spectrum auction authority. Chief of Staff Scott Delacourt said the commission expects at least one auction, AWS-3, within the next year and is taking steps to ensure it can support that auction, such as preparing necessary IT, he said. Commissioner Nathan Simington said Congress sees midband spectrum as a priority, so a significant auction should be teed up by year-end.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., told us Tuesday night that he doesn’t see it as a setback that several Senate Commerce Committee Republicans want to pursue alternatives to parts of the House panel’s budget reconciliation package spectrum proposal (see 2505120058), even as some congressional DOD supporters raised their own objections to the measure. House Commerce cleared its spectrum and AI reconciliation language early Wednesday on a party-line, 29-24 vote after Democrats unsuccessfully floated a handful of amendments that reflected their objection to using future FCC auction proceeds as an offset for extending the 2017 tax cuts and other GOP priorities.
House Commerce Committee Republicans found some success Monday in selling their Sunday night budget reconciliation proposal -- which would restore the FCC’s lapsed auction authority through FY 2034 and tee up 600 MHz of bandwidth -- as effectively balancing the interests of major communications sector and military stakeholders. But lobbyists cautioned that the measure still faces an uncertain path unless House GOP leaders can win support from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and others in the upper chamber. House Commerce set a Tuesday reconciliation markup session, which will begin at 2 p.m. in 2123 Rayburn.
House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., criticized President Donald Trump on Friday for issuing an executive order instructing CPB to cease funding NPR and PBS (see 2505020044).
House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told us in recent days that negotiations on potential compromise spectrum legislative language for a budget reconciliation package remain in flux. They emphasized it's still uncertain there will be a deal to obligate an airwaves pipeline as part of the measure. Their comments contrasted with the optimism that Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., voiced in recent interviews about the prospects of a spectrum deal that would satisfy pro-DOD legislators, who have resisted reallocating military-controlled midband airwaves.
The House voted 409-2 Monday night to approve the Senate-passed Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act (S-146), which President Donald Trump is likely to sign into law. In addition, the House cleared five other tech and telecom bills Monday night on voice votes: the Removing Our Unsecure Technologies to Ensure Reliability and Security Act (HR-866), Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency Act (HR-906), Rural Broadband Protection Act (HR-2399), Future Uses of Technology Upholding Reliable and Enhanced Networks Act (HR-2449) and the Secure Space Act (HR-2458). The chamber earlier Monday passed two other measures (see 2504280055): the Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act (HR-2480) and NTIA Reauthorization Act (HR-2482).
House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif., said Monday that she, Vice Chairman Rick Allen, R-Ga., and Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., refiled the Future Uses of Technology Upholding Reliable and Enhanced Networks Act. The measure, which passed the House in past Congresses (see 2409180049), would direct the FCC to establish a 6G task force that provides recommendations about ensuring U.S. leadership in developing that technology’s standards. House leaders included the Future Networks Act in an ultimately scuttled December continuing resolution, which would have also enacted several other telecom measures (see 2412170081).
The House Commerce Committee's Democratic leaders said Monday that they have launched an investigation into FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s “attacks on the First Amendment and his weaponization of the independent agency,” including multiple broadcaster probes he has initiated since taking over Jan. 20 (see 2502130060). Meanwhile, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Richard Hudson of North Carolina and 72 other Republican lawmakers are urging the FCC to “modernize” its “outdated” broadcast ownership rules to remove “undue constraints on broadcasters’ ability to innovate and invest in local content.”