Now that the Senate confirmed tech attorney Alan Davidson last week as director of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), all eyes are on the little agency tasked with overseeing the bulk of the $65 billion set aside by President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill for expanding internet access.
The agency will steer $48 billion in federal funding for broadband deployment, a sum that will test its capacity, note experts. The Washington Post asked two former NTIA chiefs, David Redl and Larry Irving, what they see as the biggest hurdles for Davidson and the agency’s upcoming agenda.
With NTIA receiving a cash infusion for broadband grants, scrutiny from lawmakers on Capitol Hill about how that money is distributed will increase. That’s particularly true given that most of the grants NTIA will oversee will be for projects at the state level, where lawmakers may have their own constituents in mind, Redl said.
“The level of oversight you’re going to get is usually commensurate with the amount of money, and [this] is going to demand a lot of oversight,” said Redl, who was NTIA chief under President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019.
Irving helmed NTIA from 1993 to 1999 under President Bill Clinton. He said the challenge of handling so much in funding is “more than an ocean” for NTIA. He quipped to The Washington Post that Davidson would be wise to prioritize developing relationships with lawmakers on key committees that oversee NTIA early on in his tenure.
To make high-speed Internet “affordable and available everywhere,” as Biden pledged, federal officials will need to determine which areas across the country need the grants the most. But the federal government’s outdated broadband coverage maps are an obstacle. Irving called the current mapping situation “a disaster” and said that updating the FCC’s maps must be done “well and quickly” to avoid wasting funds. “To spend billions of dollars with poor or incomplete mapping would be a huge mistake,” he said.
Addressing the mapping issue during his Senate confirmation hearing, Davidson pledged to spend the money carefully and transparently, Inside Towers reported.
Redl called the mapping situation a “constant challenge” but said the push is in good hands with Davidson and FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel leading the effort. “With the two of them, I think the maps are going to come out as well as we can expect, given the constraints that the FCC is under,” he said.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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