FCBA Panelists Circumspect to Gloomy About Chances for Major Infrastructure Initiative
FARMINGTON, Pa. --Prospects for major infrastructure legislation are iffy at best, an FCBA conference heard Friday. Brookings Institution fellow Blair Levin said he's "highly skeptical" an infrastructure bill will be enacted, estimating the chance at about 10 percent. "I think there will be some type of plan. I think broadband will be in the plan," said Wiley Rein attorney Anna Gomez, but she questioned whether there would be funding.
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Wireless Infrastructure Association CEO Jonathan Adelstein said he believes lawmakers will try to move infrastructure legislation and said it could be bipartisan but also called the political environment difficult. If a bill does pass, he expects it to include broadband. Telecom consultant Carol Mattey said she believes there will be an infrastructure initiative "some day" under some administration.
Levin agreed broadband will be included in legislation if it passes because it's one of the few infrastructure areas where there's big need in Republican "Red America," whereas the need for roads, bridges and airports is bigger in Democratic "Blue America." Even the traditional infrastructure efforts will affect broadband deployment, given the need for conduits and sensors for the IoT, he said. He said policymakers should "map, plan and fund" in that order, but in 2009 stimulus legislation, they "funded, planned and mapped."
It would be better to give an infusion of infrastructure capital to the FCC and its USF program, which is already doing a reasonable job of funding broadband deployment in rural America, said Levin, a former FCC chief of staff and national broadband plan coordinator under Democrats. Gomez, a former NTIA deputy assistant secretary, said giving all the money to one agency would lose the "creativity" of other agencies that also have much broadband experience. Adelstein, a former Democratic FCC member, said the wireless industry already is investing $30 billion a year in infrastructure, and if more relief could be provided from unreasonable local siting restrictions and other regulations, it would maximize investment. Levin also said the rising USF contribution factor is a "cancer."