A bipartisan group of House members wants the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review how interagency cooperation can speed broadband infrastructure buildouts and what progress agencies have made toward such productive cooperation.

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), the White House’s chief telecom advisory arm, has been given a prominent role in the Biden Administration's multi-billion dollar effort to subsidize universal broadband access.

Also Read: RAY BAUM‘s Act Passes House

Writing the GAO were House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.); and Communications Subcommittee chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and ranking member Bob Latta (R-Ohio).

They pointed out that RAY BAUM‘s Act directed the NTIA to facilitate broadband buildouts on federal property — the NTIA issued a report in October 2020 — as well as to work with the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, Defense, and Transportation, the Office of Management and Budget, and the General Services Administration on ways to streamline siting permits.

They want the GAO to find out how those agencies plan to implement the recommendations in the 2020 report, how NTIA is overseeing federal agency coordination, what challenges they face in implementing the recommendations, and to what extent providers have been affected in areas where there has not been streamlining.

The FCC has released its second biennial Communications Marketplace Report on competition in the delivery of voice, video, audio and data services (all 250-plus pages of it, plus addendums), including competition from new and emerging services like over-the-top video.

The FCC, per the RAY BAUM's Act that created the report, also assessed whether laws, regulations or practices pose a barrier to competitive entry or expansion of services.

Also Read: Cable Pushes FCC to Recognize Power of OTT

Cable operators, in comments on what should be in the report, said the FCC should start looking at over-the-top video competitors as the 800-pound gorillas they appear to be rather than the plucky upstarts they once were. That view from Washington could change how traditional cable systems and cable broadband providers are allowed to operate, and NCTA-The Internet & Television Association hopes that will be the case.

But rather than drawing conclusions about that competition, the report, as did the previous one, provides instead a data-powered survey of the state of the marketplace, talking about the many online video distributors (OVDs) offerings there are, the rise in original content, and the trend in companies like Disney, NBCU and WarnerMedia launching their own services rather than putting their content on third-party platforms like Netflix--Disney's announcement that it was pulling its Disney and Pixar films from Netflix, for example, or the move from NBCU's The Office from Netflix to Peacock.

The FCC also looked at the relationship between the markets for MVPDs, OVDs, and broadcast TV stations.

One thing the report pointed out was that starting Dec. 20, there would be an apples-to-apples comparison between over-the-top video providers, who generally prominently advertise their full subscription prices in contrast to MVPDs, who typically do not advertise added fees or equipment rental costs. That is because the Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 requires MVPDs to disclose their total monthly cost to subs before sign-up and clarify any promotional discounts and when they expire.

Also Read: FCC Extends MVPD Truth-in-Billing Deadline to December 2020

There was a mix of reactions from the FCC commissioners. Commissioner Brendan Carr approved in part and concurred in part; Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel concurred and Commissioner Geoffrey Starks approved in part and dissented in part. A concurrence is short of full-throated approval, but counts as a "yes" vote.

Commissioner Carr said he concurred in part because he did not agree with the FCC's approach of looking at the market in sectors rather than recognize the extent of the convergence of competition. 

"As I’ve emphasized before, the FCC’s market definitions often look backwards to where the sector has been, rather than where it is going," he said.

Rosenworcel said she concurred because the report fell short by not identifying "the transformational changes that are taking place across these services from both the provider and user perspective. This discussion could also include how these changes may create opportunities for market entry or conversely, further increase barriers to entry.... I think now, during a global pandemic when so much of modern life has migrated online and depends on communications, this kind of analysis would be especially useful. I regret that today’s report does not correct course and offer this analysis."

She also said the report fails to recognize the magnitude of the FCC's work to ensure the safety and reliability of services. 

Commissioner Starks said that while much of the report is uncontroversial and its data useful, the decisions it says have contributed to promoting competition and closing the digital divide, like the Republican-backed Lifeline reforms, have done nothing of the sort. He also took issue with the report's lack of a specific discussion of the barriers to broadcast entry for minorities and women.

He agrees with Rosenworcel that the report's agenda for the near term fails to address some needed work on things like promoting affordability in fixed broadband or making sure low income communities share in the broadband bounty. "At the end of this difficult year, we should not need more evidence that internet inequality stands between tens of millions of Americans and equitable access to opportunity. I therefore dissent in part."

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration got a tire-kicking Tuesday (June 26) in a hearing in the House Communications Subcommittee on what was billed as rural broadband legislation, including coordinating funding efforts and getting more accurate and granular maps of broadband coverage, as one legislator put it.

It has been 25 years since the NTIA was reauthorized, which was apparent from the draft reauthorization bill being considered at the hearing. The bill opened with instructions to strike the "$17,600,000 for fiscal year 1992 and $17,900,000 for fiscal year 1993" and replace it with $50,800,000 for each of years 2019 through 2021.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), chairman of the subcommittee, had signaled to reporters not long after she took over the subcommittee from now House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), that reauthorizing NTIA was one of her priorities.

She pointed out at the hearing that an NTIA reauthorization hearing was her first hearing as chair back in February 2017 and that since then the subcommittee has held nine NTIA-related hearings, including an oversight hearing earlier this year.

Agencies get funded under separate appropriation bills and continue operating under existing authorizations, but renewing them provides Congress a chance to tweak an agency's mission, give it some new direction--or directions--and perhaps some more tools. The bill's direction was clearly toward ubiquitous broadband.

In fact, Blackburn called the bill a "rural broadband bill," and "a very important one at that." Dems suggested it was

She said that there is bipartisan consensus for the bill, as well as for NTIA to come up with a comprehensive and accurate broadband availability map.

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the subcommittee, put in a plug for the AIRWAVES Act, which he said suggested should get some more love from the subcommittee.

He said the authorization bill was a good start, but more money was needed for broadband "shortfalls," including via a $40 billion LIFT AMERICA Act sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), ranking member of the parent Energy & Commerce Committee.

Related: LIFT America Act Could Fund Overbuilds

Pallone said that he was not impressed with the bill, saying it was limited on substance and fell short of giving NTIA the resources it needed.

"I am disappointed that my Republican colleagues have circulated a discussion draft that does little more than reintroduce Congressman Tonko’s ACCESS BROADBAND Act," he said, "which the subcommittee recently marked up and has already reported to the full committee."

He also noted that current NTIA administrator David Redl was not in attendance at the hearing and said the bill should not proceed until they had input from the current Administration.

On the broadband front, the bill establishes an Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within NTIA to do outreach to communities in need of high-speed broadband as well as hold workshops and develop training tools to help expand adoption and access.

And in a move that warms the hearts of ISPs often complaining about overbuilding and potential waste, fraud and abuse in government subsidies, the new office would create a database identifying how federal broadband money was being used, including tracking construction and access to any infrastructure build-out.

Getting a handle on just where broadband is and isn't is obviously key to efficient deployment.

The office will be required to provide annual reports to the Congress on what the office has done, including how many residents got broaband as a result of federal spending and the economic impact of those deployment efforts.

It would also coordinate with and streamline applications for broadband support funds from various sources,

including the FCC-overseen Universal Service Fund (USF), the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service, and several others.

Michael Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association but testifying as the former administrator of NTIA, talked about the need for boosting broadband deployment, including with better availability maps, and protecting the WHOIS regime that helps combat IP theft. He called NTIA a "low-cost, high-impact" agency.

He said that particularly important to NTIA's mission are "improving rural broadband access, including by expanding the availability of spectrum for commercial use, and (2) ensuring the continued viability of WHOIS," which he called a "transparency tool" that is "vital to law enforcement, consumer protection, and intellectual property rights in the Internet ecosystem."

Also testifying was former NTIA administrator John Kneuer, who put in a plug for making sure the government was not subsidizing broadband where it was already provided by commercial operators. "Scarce resources should be deployed where there are actual gaps in coverage, rather than in competition with private capital," he said.

The bill also includes "sense of the Congress" provisions about the need for combating cybersecurity threats and protect the supply chain, both hot-button issues with the rash of breaches, data sharing security threats from Chinese telecoms.

The sense of the Congress is that NTIA should "coordinate a forward-looking Federal response to cybersecurity threats to, and supply chain vulnerabilities in, communications networks." Another such statement says NTIA should make sure that new laws and regulations (the EU's new GDPR privacy framework notable among them) should not undermine the WHOIS system for identifying who is purchasing and managing domain names.

Redl told the Senate Commerce Committee last week that the WHOIS system could be at risk from pressure to conform to GDPR rules.

The FCC was also reauthorized this year for the first time since 1990 via the RAY BAUMS Act.

Legislation to reauthorize the FCC, boost mobile broadband and provide additional funds, as needed, for broadcasters' moves to new spectrum in the post-incentive auction repack has been included in the must-pass omnibus spending bill scheduled for a vote this week, which must pass by Friday to avoid another government shutdown.

The RAY BAUM Act (which incorporated Sen. John Thune's MOBILE NOW Act) that made it onto the bill differs slightly from the one that passed the House earlier this month, according to a Hill source.

Those changes are:

Language was added from the Senate-passed version of the MOBILE NOW Act to "streamline broadband infrastructure siting on federal lands and accelerate the availability of funds from the Spectrum Relocation Fund to clear spectrum sooner." The MOBILE NOW Act makes sure that the FCC makes mid-band spectrum available for commercial use by 2020. It both promotes making more next-gen 5G wireless spectrum available and reduce obstacles to building out networks.

Another change is language that "clarifies" the incentive auction shortfall funding (which only triggers if, as the FCC expects, the $1.75 billion auction repack fund runs out of funds before broadcasters run out of moving expenses, and "removes a requirement regarding the submission of certain FCC budget estimates and other documents to Congress."

The broadcaster shortfall funding in the bill breaks down this way, according to the National Association of Broadcasters: $600 million more will be available for the repack fund in FY 2018, with up to $350 million for full-power stations, up to $150 million for low-power TV stations and translators, up to $50 million for radio and $50 million for consumer education. There will be an added $400 million in for FY 2019."

“NAB welcomes the omnibus appropriations bill’s inclusion of RAY BAUM'S Act along with funding that fully and fairly reimburses broadcasters for their spectrum repack relocation expenses," said NAB. "We urge immediate passage of this omnibus legislation and look forward to a repack process that holds harmless TV broadcasters, local radio stations and the tens of millions of Americans who rely on our services every day."

The FCC will be reauthorized for the first time in 28 years

The bill includes $7.5 million for the National Telecommunications & Information Administration "to coordinate broadband mapping across the Federal government," with NTIA taking the lead, according to Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee. The FCC has been doing the broadband mapping since NTIA ran out of money in 2015.

“I’m also incredibly proud to see inclusion of the RAY BAUM’S Act, legislation named after my dear friend and former Energy and Commerce staff director," said Walden.

Also in the omnibus bill is $600 million for rural broadband via a pilot program administered by the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS), according to NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association. President Donald Trump has said that rural broadband deployment is a priority. “We are excited by the promise of the resources provided within the omnibus and the prospect of continuing our members’ work with RUS," said NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield.

One bill provision that is key to freeing up more spectrum is a "fix" allowing the FCC "to deposit upfront payments from spectrum bidders directly with the U.S. Treasury," without which the FCC would be unable to conduct future spectrum auctions.