The U.S. faces a shrinking percentage of students graduating with electrical engineering (EE) degrees, despite the importance of the engineering specialty to the telecom industry and the U.S. economy, ITIF said in a report released Monday. From 1997 to 2020, EE bachelor’s and master’s degrees conferred rose just 37.5%, while degrees in all other fields rose 81.1%, the report said. EE degrees granted to U.S. citizens increased 18.2%, compared to 110% for temporary residents. The group notes that the Chips and Science Act “will create tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years” requiring EE degrees. “Policymakers should provide incentives for colleges and universities to keep expanding EE enrollment for U.S. citizens and permanent residents while increasing retention rates,” ITIF recommended: “Many jobs in EE relate to military or other national security application areas that require the holder to be a U.S. citizen” and “many foreign students who obtain EE degrees here return to their home nation, boosting their domestic industry, not America’s.”

NTIA faces questions about its request for comments released last week about a national spectrum strategy, which experts said appears to show work on the strategy at an earlier stage than expected. Several groups issued comments thanking the administration for moving forward, but former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the RFC was more like an FCC notice of inquiry than an NPRM (see 2303150066). O’Rielly said the document released offered less direction than expected, based on earlier comments by Scott Harris, tapped to lead work on the strategy.

Industry groups and broadband experts want flexibility in the buy American provision of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, per comments to OMB posted through Tuesday in docket OMB-2023-0004-0001. OMB sought comments on proposed revisions and clarifications to the IIJA's Build America, Buy America Act provisions. Some raised concerns about how the requirements could affect broadband deployment projects funded through NTIA's broadband, equity, access and deployment program and backed establishing a waiver process.

Industry groups and consumer advocacy organizations disagree about how the FCC should define digital discrimination and ways to facilitate equal access to broadband, according to comments posted through Wednesday in docket 22-69. The commission adopted an NPRM in December seeking comment on rules to combat digital discrimination, as required by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (see 2301190049).

The White House's directive that all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects, including fiber cable, be American made shouldn't cause big delays in or cost run-ups for fiber for broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) projects, we were told. It's less clear whether the directive could cause challenges in obtaining the electronics -- typically made overseas -- used to light the fiber.

The FCC appears close to releasing a Further NPRM on authorizing fixed-wireless and Wi-Fi outdoors, at standard power levels, in the 5.9 GHz band, industry officials said. More than 200 wireless ISPs and others have received FCC permission to use the band since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic under grants of special temporary authority (STA), but the Wireless ISP Association pressed the FCC to act on final rules.

The Biden administration shouldn’t block U.S. companies from providing supplies to China’s Huawei by tightening export controls, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said Tuesday. Various news outlets, citing unnamed sources, report the administration is considering that. The White House didn't comment. “The administration’s ongoing efforts to bolster U.S. technology competitiveness have been commendable, but fully cutting off Huawei from U.S. suppliers would likely have the opposite effect,” said Stephen Ezell, ITIF vice president-global innovation policy. “Huawei technologies are already banned from U.S. telecommunications networks, which undercuts the national security rationale for cutting it off” and “there is a strong economic rationale not to cut off Huawei,” he said. China is a critical market for U.S. technology vendors, accounting for 36% of U.S. semiconductor sales as recently as 2019, Ezell said: “Every dollar a U.S. technology company earns in the Chinese market is one that Chinese competitors don’t earn, so banning exports to Huawei helps Chinese technology suppliers and hurts their U.S. counterparts.”

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation recommended market mechanisms to promote more efficient use of federal spectrum. “There are good reasons for the federal government to have access to spectrum,” ITIF said in a report released Monday: “Everything from weather satellites to military radar relies on reliable access to radio frequencies, and we all have an interest in these systems working well. But there are also good reasons to approach federal spectrum holdings with a degree of skepticism.” Federal users don’t face “market discipline because their spectrum is unpriced,” ITIF said. “While NTIA evaluates potential trade-offs and charges a nominal fee to spectrum users, there is nothing close to a market-based usage fee to incentivize agencies’ economization of their spectrum use, either by using a smaller range of frequencies to accomplish the same goals or by reducing the number of goals for which they rely on spectrum,” the report said. ITIF urges Congress and the Office of Management and Budget to make the spectrum relocation fund (SRF) more flexible so it can be used to upgrade equipment and for longer-term planning and research on spectrum efficiency gains. The government should auction more overlay giving the licensee “a right to use a federal agency’s spectrum if that agency agrees,” the report said. It also asks the federal government to reduce its “spectrum footprint” by using higher quality receivers and migrating services to commercial 5G networks when possible. As the FCC is “reviewing ways to improve the interference immunity of receivers operating in spectrum under its jurisdiction, the federal government should do the same,” the report said. “While it is more difficult to objectively characterize the performance of a receiver than that of a transmitter, working toward technological developments that can improve the status quo is essential. The alternative is receivers that are vulnerable to interference from nearby bands, which either threatens the integrity of the federal service or precludes commercial operations well outside the federal agency’s band.” The administration should also take a more active role in managing agencies’ spectrum use, “both through better accounting for the costs of federal uses and by making increasing commercial spectrum capacity a high-level priority,” ITIF said.

The Free State Foundation and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation applauded Tuesday's unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Green v. U.S. for upholding the constitutionality of the anticircumvention provisions in Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The two plaintiffs in Green wanted to publish works or create and sell devices intended to bypass security measures for accessing copyrighted works. They raised pre-enforcement First Amendment challenges to Section 1201, claiming the law is a facially overbroad restriction on protected speech and its application would unconstitutionally restrict their rights to engage in their projects relating to the bypassing of "technological protection measures.” The question before the court was whether the DMCA “is likely to violate the First Amendment rights of two individuals who write computer code designed to circumvent those measures,” said the D.C. Circuit opinion (docket 21-5195). “The district court answered no, and we agree.” The D.C. Circuit “was absolutely right to reject the flimsy First Amendment claims raised in Green,” Seth Cooper, FSF director-policy studies and senior fellow, blogged Wednesday. Constitutionally protected free speech “is an indispensable part of American freedom,” but those bedrock rights “were nowhere jeopardized by Section 1201,” he said: “The case was not a close call.” The decision was “an important vindication of copyright owners' right to exercise control over who can access their valuable creative content,” said Cooper. The ITIF agrees the court “reached the right decision” because the public “does not have a right to circumvent subscription-based platforms to gain unfettered access to creators’ works free of charge,” said Senior Analyst Jaci McDole Tuesday. The Constitution “provides creators intellectual property rights for a reason,” she said. “Creators’ livelihoods depend on controlling how their works are distributed and sold. It’s welcome news that the court upheld those constitutional rights in the Green case.”

The U.S. fixed and mobile broadband markets are "competitive" and the "central remaining challenge" is broadband adoption, said the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's Jessica Dine and Joe Kane in a new report Monday. Promoting adoption "means a better explanation of the benefits and importance of the Internet, widespread education in digital literacy, and better access to both affordable internet plans and the necessary technology," the authors wrote. The report said about 98% of Americans have access to a fixed connection, but only 62% of households subscribe to a connection of at least 25/3 Mbps "despite its wider availability." The report "not only highlights the state of the Internet ecosystem but also the many complexities and shortcomings with data used to evaluate it," Kane said: "That’s why it’s important to steer clear of a myopic focus on a single dataset or aspect of the broadband."