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.

As policymakers look at reforms to the USF, they need to examine why so many people who are eligible for support don’t enroll in Lifeline and other programs, experts said Monday during an event hosted by Georgetown University's Center for Business and Public Policy. The session coincided with Monday's deadline for responding to the congressional USF working group's request for comments and proposals on USF reform.

Commenters urged the FCC not to go too far to limit the information it reports in its Telecom Act Section 706 reports to Congress. Commissioners approved a notice of inquiry in August on the preparation of the reports, with an eye on more narrowly focusing them based on statutory language (see 2508050056). Comments were due Monday in docket 25-223.

Meeting the goals of the budget reconciliation package to make 800 MHz of spectrum available for auction (see 2507070045) won’t be easy, especially with 3.1-3.45 and 7.4-8.4 GHz exempted from potential reallocation, warned Joe Kane, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's director of broadband and spectrum policy. Kane spoke with former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly in a new webcast, part of a series for the Free State Foundation.

Regulatory changes being pushed by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr will likely have little effect on broadband deployment, New Street’s Blair Levin said during an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation webinar Tuesday. Other speakers noted that for the most part, the U.S. broadband market is highly competitive and getting more so, as fixed-wireless access and satellite broadband become more widespread.

In the biggest wireless deal since T-Mobile bought Sprint five years ago, AT&T announced Tuesday that it’s buying EchoStar spectrum for $23 billion (see 2508260005). EchoStar will continue to offer wireless service, but primarily as a mobile virtual network operator riding on AT&T’s network.

A bill to mandate location-tracking mechanisms for exports of advanced chips was panned this week by technology policy experts who said the requirement would be tricky to implement and could push foreign customers to stop trusting American-made semiconductors. They also said Congress should be more focused on boosting the Bureau of Industry and Security budget to help the agency step up enforcement.

Arguments that low earth orbit broadband can't meet BEAD capacity requirements and that LEO lacks scalability are incorrect, Joe Kane, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation director of broadband and spectrum policy, wrote this week on the group's website. Kane said LEO service can exceed 100 Mbps downloads, which is more than adequate for consumer use. While LEO upload speeds fall short of 20 Mbps in some areas, wireline upload speeds in those same areas "are precisely zero; the alternative fiber networks don’t exist," he said. Kane said LEO networks are scalable as they launch new satellites and account for the cost to replace them over time. Any BEAD fund awards come with enforceable obligations to meet performance standards, he said. Criticisms that LEO broadband is more expensive wrongly compare urban wireline rates to rural Starlink rates, as consumer prices will always be lower in more densely populated areas, according to Kane. He said absent USF funding, rural wireline broadband would be more expensive than SpaceX's Starlink service.

The FCC on Friday announced commission approval of Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of Frontier, in an action by the Wireline Bureau (see 2505160024). The approval came immediately after Verizon filed a letter at the FCC agreeing to get rid of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a recurring focus of President Donald Trump. DEI defenders criticized the order. Industry officials told us one reason FCC Chairman Brendan Carr probably didn’t seek a commissioner vote was because of the DEI provisions and concerns about opposition from the two Democratic commissioners.

Foreign countries' retaliatory tariffs against the Trump administration’s new global tariffs could cut U.S. exports of goods covered by the World Trade Organization’s Information Technology Agreement by at least $56 billion a year, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said April 23.