Raimondo 'Correct' on Likely November Revised Broadband Map Release: FCC
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s Wednesday testimony to the Senate Appropriations Commerce Subcommittee that the FCC will “possibly” have its revised broadband coverage data map ready in November (see 2205110073) “is correct,” an FCC spokesperson emailed us. “We’ve been working together closely on these efforts.” Raimondo emphasized on Thursday the coming maps’ importance to NTIA’s plans for disbursing its $48 billion in broadband money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. She spoke during a House Appropriations Commerce Subcommittee hearing on the Commerce Department’s FY 2023 budget request.
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“We’re not going to give” states any of the $42.5 billion from the NTIA-administered broadband equity, access and deployment program “until we have the maps,” as required by language in IIJA, Raimondo told House Appropriations Commerce ranking member Robert Aderholt, R-Ala. “We’re going to give” each state a $5 million “planning grant” to “work on their state plan … but the big money isn’t going to flow until we have the maps and they prove to us” the money will be going to unserved and underserved areas.
Commerce’s mandate is that the broadband money go to “unserved first” and that’s “nonnegotiable,” Raimondo said: States’ plans have to “guarantee” they will ensure all unserved areas get broadband access before they spend money on underserved areas. She earlier told Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., NTIA is “going to hit” its Monday deadline for issuing a notice of funding opportunity for BEAD. The Fiber Broadband Association said Thursday it expects NTIA to issue the NOFO Friday. NTIA has been staffing up to a level where “we have the team that we need” to effectively administer its IIJA broadband money “and I think we’re going to need them for years to come” given the scope of the funding, Raimondo told Meng.
Aderholt said he’s “glad to hear” Raimondo commit to ensuring unserved areas get priority for NTIA’s broadband money. That’s what “the law clearly states,” he said. He asked Raimondo how Commerce would be able to enforce prioritization of unserved areas since “it seems possible that a state could award funding to both unserved and underserved areas concurrently,” which “could result in overbuilding and result in unserved areas being further left behind.”
Commerce is “tracking closely” permitting issues that may hinder a ramp-up of U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing, Raimondo told Aderholt. “There may be a role for Congress” as well in easing those restrictions. New semiconductor fabrication facilities sometimes “take two, three years to be permitted and we don’t have that time,” Raimondo said. Aderholt pressed for information on the Biden administration’s plan to “ease or to assist with regulations and permitting processes to help expedite fab construction timelines.” The National Environmental Policy Act permitting process “alone could delay the construction” of a new facility “by five years or more.”
Aderholt also cited “a lot of support up on Capitol Hill” for including incentives to encourage growth of the U.S. chips industry in a compromise measure marrying elements of the House-passed America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology and Economic Strength Act (HR-4521) and Senate-passed U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (S-1260). Both measures include $52 billion in subsidies to encourage U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing (see 2201260062) but differ in other areas. The HR-4521/S-1260 conference committee held its first formal meeting Thursday.