Economic Growth
FCC Poised to Modernize Satellite Spectrum
By Blake Reed On April 8, 2026, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the Federal Communications Commission will vote on April 30 for a new Report and Order to update spectrum-sharing rules for satellite broadband. The goal is to replace rigid 1990s-era regulations with a smarter, performance-based…
BEAD funds should not subsidize ISPs forever
By James Erwin A bipartisan group of 14 senators is lobbying NTIA to let states keep the $20 billion in BEAD savings Administrator Arielle Roth has been able to find in the program. As we have argued before, this money should return to the taxpayer, and it certainly should not…
House Oversight Sheds Light on Biden-Harris Administration’s Broadband Deployment Failures
By Lawson Faulkner On Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing titled “A Legacy of Incompetence: Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Policy Failures.” During the hearing, lawmakers took aim at the disastrous mismanagement of the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which…
The Problem(s) with Poles
By James Erwin If you want to make any telecom expert’s fingers curl, mention pole attachments. It is an incredibly niche policy area, but exorbitant pole attachment fees and burdensome terms from municipally-owned poles could undermine federal broadband deployment efforts, possibly wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. If Congress and the…
FCC Pushes Broadcasters to Publish DEI Scorecards of Employees
By Jason Lee The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion agenda is losing ground by the day. More corporations are cutting their DEI departments, and it is generating backlash. The FCC joined in last month when it voted 3- 2…
FCC’s Enhanced Competition Incentive Program Uses Better Incentives, But It’s Still A Band-Aid
By Jason Lee Last week the FCC launched the Enhanced Competition Incentive Program , which the commission voted to establish in July 2022. The program seeks to incentivize spectrum license holders to provide unused radiofrequency spectrum to small carriers, tribal nations, and…
Two Cheers for the BEAD Allocations
It’s finally here. On Monday, more than eighteen months after President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the administration has at last released each state’s broadband grant allocations. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program will distribute $42.5 billion to states to expand broadband to rural…
Americans for Tax Reform & Digital Liberty File Comments to FCC on Best Practices for Preventing and Eliminating Digital Discrimination
Americans for Tax Reform and Digital Liberty jointly filed comments on February 21st with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding the agency’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Digital Discrimination. These comments explore the pitfalls that would result from the agency’s adoption of a disparate impact standard to measure digital discrimination, as opposed to a…
FCC’s New Broadband Coverage Maps Are a Great First Step
By allowing ISPs to establish a baseline and then crowdsourcing corrections and challenges, the FCC will maximize the accuracy of the data it is collecting. Doing so through an iterative process will enable them to refine the data over time and give consumers and policymakers an ever-improving tool to determine need.
The Senate Should Pass the House Spectrum Bill
Without Congressional reauthorization, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will lose its general spectrum auction authority at the end of the fiscal year on September 30. Congress has never allowed this to happen, and it should not do so now. Taking the initiative, the House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a…