Fixed Wireless Will Play Big Role in Broadband Spending: New WIA President
The Wireless Infrastructure Association is continuing its push, started under former President Jonathan Adelstein (see 2204180045), to ensure that wireless has a big role to play as the federal government awards more than $48 billion in connectivity money through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, new President Patrick Halley said in an interview. WIA was among the groups that raised concerns NTIA is putting too much emphasis on fiber, in contravention of the direction from Congress when it created the broadband, equity, access and deployment program (see 2205130054).
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Fiber is a good technology but not for all deployments, everywhere, Halley said. “To sort of force a state into a particular technology that potentially exhausts all the funds, to us, coming top down from Washington, is the wrong answer,” he said: “The right answer is give the states the flexibility to make that decision on their own. If it’s fiber, great, we get it.” Most will likely want a mix of fiber and fixed wireless, he said.
The states are still staffing up and working through how they plan to spend the BEAD funds, Halley said. “There are a lot of conversations going on in the states right now about where should we be doing fiber, where does that economically make sense,” he said. States are looking at “the right allocation” between fixed wireless and fiber. NTIA “appreciates” states are trying to find the best path forward, he said. As long as proposals are reasonable and homes will be connected “I think NTIA will be willing to have a conversation about what makes the most sense as the state sees fit,” Halley said.
WIA sees fixed wireless as key to closing the digital divide, Halley said. Fixed is “a real competitor” and “that’s starting to be felt” by traditional providers of wired service to the home, he said. “It’s here to stay, and I want to make sure that policymakers understand the value of that technology,” he said. In the past year, about half of net broadband adds to the home have been fixed wireless, he said. “It’s not like this is a nascent technology, and maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t,” he said: “There’s no doubt fixed wireless can be an effective, high-speed broadband solution for a lot of homes in this country.”
While cutting regulatory red tape for deployments was a big theme of the FCC under former Chairman Ajit Pai, the current FCC has been less active in that area. Commissioner Brendan Carr recently urged the agency to refocus on siting challenges (see 2210050052).
WIA hopes the FCC will “stay the course with the reforms that they’ve already adopted,” Halley said: “There have been some challenges to those reforms. It’s important that the commission recognize the value of the decisions they have already made.” Those decisions had “a real impact … in terms of getting wireless infrastructure deployed,” he said. WIA doesn’t have “a specific ask of the FCC right now,” he said.
The FCC clarified on several occasions Section 6409 of the 2012 Spectrum Act and the rules that govern deployment of wireless infrastructure, Halley said. “You do still see some communities that try to resist deployment, notwithstanding the clear decisions that came out of the FCC,” he said: “We’re starting to see some localities push back. … We need to watch that.” Supply and workforce issues are also important to WIA, Halley said. “We are very appropriately looking at ensuring we have supply chain issues resolved,” he said: “It’s good and important that the administration, and states, are increasingly focused on workforce development.”
WIA supports the administration’s work on a national spectrum strategy (see 2209190061) but he hopes the strategy will focus on specific bands for 5G, said Halley, who started at WIA in August. He was most recently USTelecom senior vice president-policy and advocacy and general counsel.