NTIA Blog

Access to the Internet plays a critical role, serving as a catalyst for work, education, essential services, and more as part of routines in everyday life. But, even today, for many Americans, access to affordable, reliable, high-speed internet is still out of reach. 

The federal government operates a number of programs to make funding available to States, local leaders, and other eligible recipients who are engaged in high-speed internet-related activities for their communities. 

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has been working to expand access and increase connectivity across the U.S. through the Internet for All effort by increasing awareness of federal funding available for closing the digital divide. 

As part of that mission, NTIA released an update to the Federal Funding site, which serves as a comprehensive, “one-stop shop” of resources for potential applicants seeking federal broadband funding. 

The recent update of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and NTIA memorializes a shared commitment between the two agencies to renew a partnership critical to jointly managing the nation’s spectrum resources.   

Now the work begins to translate this agreement into consistent, meaningful practice. Given the scope of the document, there is quite a lot for the FCC and NTIA to do to fulfill the potential of the MOU.  

The agreement reflects the need for the two national spectrum managers to share information and communicate frequently and effectively. The agreement’s major provisions echo and anchor the goals of the Spectrum Coordination Initiative announced this past February.   

The MOU promotes:  

August is often described as a quiet time here in Washington. That hasn’t been the case at NTIA.  

NTIA serves a critical role in ensuring the most effective and efficient use of spectrum across the federal government. With a focus on working toward a coordinated, national approach to spectrum use, promoting evidence-based approaches to spectrum allocation is a critical endeavor. Much effort is currently focused on spectrum sharing. NTIA’s research laboratory, the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS), is bringing needed clarity to the challenge through its specialized engineering studies known as electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) studies.

Specialized engineering studies assess the ability of wireless telecommunications systems, in particular emerging wireless technologies such as 5G, to function acceptably in their electromagnetic environment. If multiple systems are operating in the same or adjacent spectrum, EMC studies can determine whether they all function for their intended purposes or will cause unacceptable interference and performance degradation. 

As a leading expert in the essential EMC engineering disciplines -  spectrum measurements, spectrum propagation modeling, and interference analysis - ITS performs EMC studies to support NTIA’s Office of Spectrum Management and inform spectrum sharing policy and regulation as well as to answer EMC questions posed by other federal agencies. 

In early June, around 500 young people from more 100 countries descended on Kigali, Rwanda for the ITU’s first Generation Connect Global Youth Summit. I was lucky to represent NTIA and the United States as part of a delegation sponsored by USTTI.  

The Summit sought to bring together “digital natives” – those of us who grew up in the age of the Internet – to interact directly with global business leaders, government officials, and policymakers. In his opening remarks, Rwandan Prime Minister Édouard Ngirente recognized young people as a major asset to the global community. At the same time, I—along with my fellow youth delegates—gained a new respect for our digital fluency and how it can bring about change.  

The Summit was made up of intergenerational dialogues and small group sessions on core issues like the future of work, the gender digital divide, and digital solutions for climate action. I learned about other young people’s work to address policy challenges, like a group of young Nigerian entrepreneurs training children in digital literacy, a Ugandan engineer who aspires to become an astronaut, and an ICT analyst for the government of Trinidad and Tobago, among many others.  

Registration is now open for the International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies (ISART)™ 2022, which will explore the theme: “Evolving Spectrum-Sharing Regulation through Data-, Science-, and Technology-Driven Analysis and Decision-Making.”

The goal for ISART 2022 is to chart a technical roadmap and gain consensus for specific data-, science-, and technology-driven means to evolve and expedite spectrum sharing analyses and decision-making and identify opportunities for continuous improvements and developments beyond the current linear spectrum sharing process.

Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Alan Davidson will open the conference, which is hosted by the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS), the science and engineering laboratory of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The virtual conference will be held over four days:

• June 13: 1 to 4 p.m. MDT
• June 14: 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. MDT
• June 15: 1 to 4:30 p.m. MDT
• June 16: 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. MDT

ISART is a U.S. government-sponsored science and engineering discussion-based conference that brings together government, industry, and academic leaders (both domestic and international) for the purpose of forecasting the development and application of advanced radio technologies.

On November 15, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included a historic $65 billion investment to ensure that everyone in America has access to affordable, reliable, high-speed internet. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) was allocated more than $48 billion of this funding to work with states and other stakeholders to lay the critical groundwork to connect every American. 

NTIA developed a whole-of-government, whole-of-nation strategy to meet President Biden’s goal to connect everyone in America to reliable, affordable, high-speed internet service. On January 7, 2022, NTIA requested public comment on a wide range of policy and program considerations associated with the new high-speed internet grant programs authorized and funded by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The request for comment was a vital part of NTIA’s strategy, allowing a broad and diverse set of stakeholders to inform program development and help close the digital divide and meet the ambitious goal of connecting every American. This process bolstered NTIA’s work and improved the number and quality of ideas under consideration as the agency developed the Notices of Funding Opportunity for the new grant programs.

A successful broadband project begins with a broadband plan, one that lays out the goals and path forward to enhance internet access and meaningful use within a target area or community. But there are many moving pieces involved in creating a broadband plan. BroadbandUSA’s Tribal Broadband Planning Toolkit aims to simplify the process for tribes. It provides the guidance, knowledge, and resources to design, implement, and then execute a broadband plan in tribal communities.

While this toolkit can be used at any time and for any broadband planning purpose – for NTIA or other programs – it comes at an especially opportune time: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) allocated an additional $2 billion and relaxed some of the program requirements to the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program.

The toolkit outlines seven, common elements that serve as the building blocks of a tribal broadband plan. Designed for interactive use, each element has a dedicated worksheet and a tab in an accompanying, downloadable Excel-based template. The elements are:

Apps on mobile devices are a part of daily life for many Americans. They allow us to talk with our friends, find a ride home, play games, or monitor our health. These applications on our mobile phones and tablets can help small business owners reach new customers, and thousands of American entrepreneurs and innovators are working on apps that increase productivity, improve health care and make learning more fun.

That’s why mobile apps have become a significant part of our economy -- by one industry account, the app economy was valued at $1.7 trillion in 2020, employing more than 5.9 million Americans.

In his Executive Order on promoting competition, President Biden recognized America’s tech sector as an engine of innovation and growth, but he warned that dominant Internet platforms can “use their power to exclude market entrants, to extract monopoly profits, and to gather intimate personal information that they can exploit for their own advantage.”  

With the goal of promoting a fair, open, and competitive marketplace, the Executive Order directed the Department of Commerce to conduct a study of the mobile app ecosystem, and to use an open and transparent process to hear from the many stakeholders in the app economy, including consumers, app developers, businesses, and nonprofits.