Potential NTIA Reauthorization Revisit May Address Broadband Mapping

House Communications Chairman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., and House Commerce ranking member Greg Walden, R-Ore., separately said they've had very preliminary talks about NTIA renewal and there's no definitive concept of what such a bill would look like if they pursued it. It's one of several telecom policy issues on the subcommittee's radar now that its attention is no longer on the Save the Internet Act net neutrality bill. The House passed HR-1644 last month (see 1904230069).

“I'm not going into this with a preconceived notion” of what NTIA reauthorization legislation should look like despite the presence of the 2018 draft measure, Walden said: “It'll be up to" House Commerce Democrats to set the direction of the process, but the committee should go about it much like it did with FCC renewal and “look at the agency as it exists today, what its needs are, whether it needs to be reconfigured, if it needs more resources, if it has the right mission.” Walden's hopeful House Commerce will have an easier time getting into the recertification process now than last Congress when it had to wait until after the Senate confirmed NTIA Administrator David Redl in November 2017 (see 1711070084).

NTIA reauthorization “could certainly involve a discussion about [broadband coverage data] mapping and who could get this work done accurately,” Walden said. Existing broadband coverage information and FCC practices for collecting that data have been a frequent topic of Capitol Hill's ire, most recently during an April Senate Commerce Committee hearing (see 1904100064). “It could also be a way to take a worldwide view of 5G and where there are pockets of spectrum we could put to better use,” he said. “Nobody knows spectrum better than [Redl]," Walden said, saying that as House Commerce's chief GOP telecom policy counsel, Redl was “a master” at “finding it and helping us figure out how to free it up.”

Any NTIA reauthorization bill originating in House Commerce is likely to be at least somewhat more expansive than the Republicans’ 2018 draft because the chamber is now under Democratic control, lobbyists said. “Democrats will want to do something different” because a lot of things “could have been covered” in the 2018 draft but weren’t, one tech lobbyist said. “It was a very sparse bill.” Now-House Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., criticized the Republicans’ draft then for being too narrow in scope, so he will likely want any measure the committee moves to include language that addresses NTIA’s authority on issues beyond broadband and spectrum policy, including on cybersecurity, internet governance and IoT matters, lobbyists said.

NTIA recertification isn't inherently controversial, so any legislation shouldn’t go too far into the weeds of dictating what the agency should do to address a particular policy matter, said consultant John Kneuer, administrator during part of President George W. Bush's administration. Lawmakers can say NTIA is authorized to take on certain policy matters, but “if you start to use [reauthorization] to dictate preferred policy outcomes,” that could “tempt controversy,” Kneuer said. Congress can legislate that NTIA play a larger role in coordinating broadband mapping. If lawmakers dictate that the agency produce “maps at the zip code or census block level,” it would be “moving beyond an authorizing statute,” Kneuer said.

Broadband

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., is separately looking to move ahead with addressing broadband mapping issues via the newly filed Broadband Interagency Coordination Act (S-1294). The bill, which Wicker filed Thursday with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., would direct the FCC, NTIA and Agriculture Department to sign a memorandum of understanding to coordinate on broadband funding, including considering “basing the distribution of funds for broadband deployment … on standardized” broadband coverage data (see 1905020058).

S-1294 is “the kind of thing that we should really move on quickly” given concerns about how the FCC and other agencies coordinate on broadband deployment funding, Wicker told us Thursday. Telecom lobbyists believe he'll likely want to bring it up for markup in the near future. Wicker hopes the bill will ensure the current broadband maps are “shredded and dumped into the Great Lakes.”

Broadband mapping generally seems like an issue that’s ripe for lawmakers to include in an NTIA reauthorization measure given bipartisan concerns about existing coverage data, lobbyists said. “If they want a bipartisan accomplishment by the end of this Congress, there’s a lot of consensus” on addressing mapping, one telecom lobbyist said. “There’s more of a pressing need” to solve that problem, especially given the debate over the proposed FCC $20-some billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (see 1904160057). “You can’t really do anything with” that fund “until you get better maps,” a telecom lobbyist said.

Others are doubtful about how large of a broadband role Congress would give to NTIA. “During [President Barack Obama’s] administration there was much more comfort with giving NTIA a more prominent role” on broadband policy, but “that’s not my sense of where [President Donald Trump’s] administration is,” one telecom lobbyist said. “NTIA has been active on privacy and IoT and 5G and spectrum,” and Redl’s interests “tend to lie with spectrum policy, so I’m not sure” he would urge Congress to give the agency larger broadband responsibilities.” Any broadband provisions Congress choose to put in an NTIA bill would likely need to be germane to the agency itself, the lobbyist said.

Spectrum

An NTIA bill’s spectrum language could be significantly influenced by pending reports ordered under Trump’s call for development of a comprehensive national spectrum policy, lobbyists said (see 1810250058). “You could see legislation being crafted to effectuate” NTIA’s ability to repurpose identified spectrum, said one lobbyist who follows Democratic lawmakers. “There’s going to be some reluctance among some agencies to identify any available spectrum, so there could be adjunct language calling out those agencies and directing them to find spectrum they’re willing to walk away from.”

Lawmakers also should use renewal legislation to increase NTIA’s resources to enable it to “really take charge of parts of the [Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee] process,” said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Broadband and Spectrum Policy Director Doug Brake. “So much of that gets delegated to the agencies, whose incentives don’t always align with the broader [spectrum] interests of the U.S. government.”

Language from some existing bills could be drawn into a larger NTIA measure, including the Advancing Critical Connectivity Expands Service, Small Business Resources, Opportunities, Access and Data Based on Assessed Need and Demand (Access Broadband) Act (HR-1328/S-1046), some lobbyists said. HR-1328, which passed the House last Congress, would establish the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within NTIA (see 1904050059). The House is set to vote on HR-1328 Wednesday under suspension of the rules. Lawmakers could fold in the Digital Equity Act (S-1167) because it would task NTIA with evaluating digital equity projects and providing lawmakers with detailed information about which projects are most effective, lobbyists said.