Clyburn, Others to Opine on Lift America Act's Broadband Language in House Hearing
The House Commerce Committee is set to get dueling feedback from communications sector stakeholders Wednesday on broadband provisions in the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s (Lift) America Act (HR-2741). The bill, refiled last week, would allocate $40 billion for broadband projects, $12 billion in grants for implementing next-generation 911 technologies and $5 billion for a loan and credit program for broadband projects. Democrats first filed the bill in 2017 (see 1706020056). The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn.
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Consideration of HR-2741 comes weeks after President Donald Trump and top Democrats agreed to pursue $2 trillion in spending on broadband and other infrastructure projects (see 1904300194). The communications sector hopes for more appetite for infrastructure legislation this year because Democrats regained the majority in the House in the 2018 election (see 1811130011).
“I believe we have a commitment to make sure that every American has access [to broadband] so that they're not disadvantaged in their lives,” House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., told reporters Tuesday. “There just isn't a business case to do it, so it's going to take investment from the federal government.” House Commerce Democrats' emphasis on HR-2741's broadband and NG-911 language is also reflected in a briefing memo on the hearing.
Former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn urges lawmakers in her written testimony to “go big and be bold” on broadband, endorsing HR-2741's course of action. The proposed $40 billion in broadband money is “almost ten times the annual amount of [Connect America Fund] funding currently available” but that “is an important and necessary level of investment,” Clyburn says. “Capital expenditures should be prioritized” for unserved communities that don't have broadband infrastructure capable of delivering 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. She urges lawmakers to restrict funding in HR-2741 to unserved areas that aren't already receiving money via CAF Phase II, the Department of Agriculture's ReConnect program or the FCC's proposed Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.
Clyburn recommends disposing of the FCC's current broadband coverage maps and using HR-2741 to require ISPs to “show where they currently provide service, using subscription-based information to confirm network coverage, and comparing the FCC’s information to third-party sources, like Microsoft’s broadband usage data that is publicly available.” Lawmakers “should approach this investment as an 'only once' proposition” and require any funded broadband project “be robust and capable of serving their communities long into the future,” Clyburn says.
American Enterprise Institute Visiting Fellow Daniel Lyons also praises some aspects of HR-2741's broadband language, but he faults some provisions. The bill's requirement that funding be allocated to states in direct proportion to a state's population “may prove suboptimal” because it would “have the unintended consequence of favoring rural areas that happen to be in a state with a large urban area over rural areas that lack a big city -- even though those urban areas are likely to have service and thus tell us little about the state’s availability gap,” he says. “It would be better to allocate funds on the basis of each state’s unserved population, which better directs the money toward those who it is designed to benefit.”
Lyons urges lawmakers to “adopt an activity-based approach to defining broadband need: Identify the core activities that are essential to participating in online society and estimate the minimum speed necessary to engage in those activities.” Availability should not be the only factor lawmakers consider, as “tools such as low-income assistance and digital literacy training will also be important in the fight to achieve universal connectivity,” he says.
The U.S Conference of Mayors isn't making recommendations on broadband language but urges Congress to “not act (nor allow the FCC to act) in ways that diminish our property rights and existing authorities to manage and seek market-based compensation for the use of our local rights-of-way and other public property,” says Piscataway, New Jersey, Mayor Brian Wahler. The Accelerating Wireless Broadband Development by Empowering Local Communities Act (HR-530) “ is just the type of leadership that mayors need from Congress.” HR-530 would overturn the FCC's September wireless infrastructure order (see 1901160038). Congress can also “provide a service to all Americans by refusing to accept the false narrative that diminishing or subordinating larger cities’ property rights will somehow translate into industry investment in rural America with new state-of-the-art technologies,” Wahler says.