FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the agency could look at driving “inefficiencies” out of the USF program and NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth clarified the agency’s focus for the BEAD program in separate Q&As onstage Tuesday at NTCA’s Telecom Executive Policy Summit. NTIA rules restricting the broadband funding that BEAD participants can receive are aimed at preventing bids that rely on “speculative, hypothetical funding” to complete their obligations and at avoiding defaults, Roth said. NTIA said Tuesday that it approved 18 state BEAD proposals (see 2511180007).
Top Senate Commerce Committee leaders told us they aren’t yet completely ruling out proposals to make the USF subject to Congress’ annual appropriations process as part of a legislative revamp of the program. However, some panel Democrats are dubious because of flaws in the funding system, amplified by the ongoing government shutdown (see 2510230049). In comments submitted to Congress' bipartisan USF working group, some stakeholders also strongly advocated for shifting to an appropriations-based funding model (see 2509160064). Meanwhile, panelists at a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition event Wednesday said they see appropriations as a largely unappealing option to give USF more sustainable long-term funding.
Experts warned Wednesday that there are no easy answers to shoring up the USF and making predictable funding available for years to come. During a Broadband Breakfast webinar, panelists noted that some federal funding is disappearing, with FCC commissioners voting 2-1 last month to delete support for school bus Wi-Fi and internet hot spots that aren't on school or library premises (see 2509300051).
NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield warned that changes in the BEAD program could mean that many of the group’s members will sit it out though a good number are well positioned to participate. Departing next year after 25 years at NTCA's helm (see 2509170060), Bloomfield spoke with former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly during a Free State Foundation webcast. “This is a tougher business than people think it is,” she said.
A handful of right-leaning groups are pressing strongly for a bipartisan congressional working group to recommend funding USF via the appropriations process as part of a potential legislative revamp of the program, but other stakeholders said they still they favor various expansions of the initiative’s contributions base. Comments to the working group were due late Monday night as part of its recently relaunched bill consultations (see 2508010051). The right-leaning groups also called for the most far-reaching changes to the program’s governance and structure, in some cases seeking to ax the high-cost fund.
West Kentucky and Tennessee (WK&T) Telecommunications Cooperative CEO Karen Jackson-Furman and other witnesses plan to highlight for the House Small Business Committee their hopes for a restarted congressional working group’s bid for a USF legislative revamp (see 2507030051), according to written testimony released ahead of Wednesday's hearing on broadband deployment’s effect on rural entrepreneurs. Some urge lawmakers to continue addressing internet affordability as part of the USF revamp. Several of the witnesses also back Republicans’ bid to further ease permitting reviews of connectivity projects, including via the controversial American Broadband Deployment Act (see 2305240069). The House Small Business hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in 2360 Rayburn.
The already-high USF contribution factor is expected to rise, based on a Friday filing at the FCC by the Universal Service Administrative Co. The factor is projected to increase from 36% in Q3 to 39.3% in Q4. Congressional leaders recently relaunched a bipartisan working group to study a USF legislative revamp (see 2508010051), but experts warned Monday that addressing USF won’t be easy.
The recently relaunched bipartisan congressional working group studying a USF legislative revamp is seeking a new round of stakeholder comments about how to proceed and has opened a portal for submissions, Senate Communications Subcommittee Chair Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said Friday. Meanwhile, the Digital Progress Institute said in a white paper Thursday that USF's current contribution mechanism is “unsustainable” and “horrendously inefficient.”
The FCC avoided a potentially disastrous result when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the USF contribution factor in its Consumers’ Research decision last month (see 2507020049), HWG’s Chris Wright said during a practitioners panel that was part of an FCBA CLE Tuesday (see 2507150081). “If the case had gone the other way” it would have “called into question almost everything in the Communications Act,” said Wright, a former FCC general counsel.
Leaders of the House and Senate Commerce committees who are spearheading the bipartisan congressional working group on a USF legislative revamp, which relaunched in June (see 2506120091), told us they plan to begin meeting again this month. But they said they feel less pressure to quickly reach an agreement on legislative recommendations since the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in Consumers’ Research v. FCC, which found that USF’s funding mechanism is constitutional (see 2506270054). Sens. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and John Thune, R-S.D., formed the working group in 2023 as Communications Subcommittee chairman and ranking member, respectively (see 2305110066).