OTA Restart Has Lawmaker Support, Though Questions Remain, McNerney Says
Re-establishing the Office of Technology Assessment seems to have significant lawmaker support, though there are questions of under what agency it should be housed and the proper funding level, said House Commerce member Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., Friday at the Telecommunications Policy Research Institute. He said there's a need for nonpartisan expertise on issues and OTA's disbanding in the 1990s was "a tragedy."
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McNerney said he plans to introduce the Digital Equity Act in the House this week. The bill, which would allocate federal funding for digital inclusion projects, was introduced in the Senate in April (see 1904110068). The WiFi Caucus co-chair said maximizing unlicensed spectrum is a key goal of the caucus since a lot of 5G activity will be on Wi-Fi. He repeated his advocacy for opening up the 5.9 GHz band for unlicensed use (see 1906200066). A member of the Artificial Intelligence Caucus, he said AI raises a host of ethical issues the caucus is grappling with, such as the potential for jobs displacement, and whether the caucus should give the National Institute of Standards and Technology a mandate to create standards and tests.
The C band is often fundamental to connectivity in Alaska and northern Canada, and its clearing for 5G raises a host of issues, said Heather Hudson, former director of Alaska's Institute of Social and Economic Research. She said those regions -- with numerous small, isolated communities -- rely on satellite and point-to-point microwave for voice, data and video delivery, with fiber in the form of submarine cables being relatively rare. She said the freeze on satellite and fixed microwave licenses effectively eliminates any future use of the 3.7-4.2 GHz band for interactive services and TV receive-only in Alaska.
Canada's 5G transition plan has it conducting a C-band auction in 2022 but there's no required provision of fifth-generation for all Canadians, including the northern residents, Licensees would need to guarantee coverage to only 50 percent of its Northwest territories population after 20 years, and 25 percent of its Nunavut population, said Hudson. "Twenty years is forever in this field." She said there should be alternatives for broadband before particular technologies are shut down or phased out. Low earth orbit satellite constellation technology seems to hold promise for connectivity for those regions, she said, but the business cases for those proposed constellations is more questionable.
The rollout of 5G infrastructure will mean increasing pressure on communities to allow installations in parks and residential neighborhoods, but conflicts between telecom operators and local communities are skewed heavily in favor of communities, said Penn State telecom professor Ben Cramer. Those clashes are often more contentious than necessary due to the Telecom Act's liberal use of the word "barriers" framing such matters in judges' eyes as being about local communities stopping economic progress, he said. Other property owners, like landlords, aren't accused of interfering with markets when exercising property rights, he said.
Cramer said when the act comes up against the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) or National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Telecom Act will "come out on top" because it has more direct language and clear goals set out for the FCC. He said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision that the FCC wrongly excluded small cells from NEPA and NHPA review (see 1908090021) was "a temporary setback" for telecom, but the FCC is likely to prevail on appeal.