Ted Hearn's Policyband reports that the House-passed bill reauthorizing the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) contained a provision requiring the Biden administration to prepare – yet another! – national broadband plan.
According to Policyband – by the way, a site with much useful information if you haven’t checked it out – the Proper Leadership to Align Networks (PLAN) for Broadband Act, sponsored by Reps. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Annie Kuster (D-N.H.), is a response to the 2022 Government Accountability Office report that detailed the current balkanized condition of the federal approach to funding broadband projects. The PLAN Act would give NTIA one year – after consulting with the FCC, the Agriculture Department, the Treasury Department and several more – to submit to Congress a plan to “support better management of federal broadband programs to deliver on the goal of providing high-speed, affordable broadband internet access service to all individuals in the United States.” The GAO report determined that “U.S. broadband efforts are not guided by a national strategy” and that “federal broadband efforts are fragmented and overlapping, with more than 100 programs administered by 15 agencies,” risking overbuilding as well as wasteful duplication.
Well, it shouldn’t take a law of Congress to get the government to develop a national strategy with a primary aim of eliminating the duplication inherent in separate 100 broadband funding programs administered by 15 separate agencies. Here at the Free State Foundation, we’ve been recommending that this be done for well over a year! It should just take a commitment to effective and efficient government.
We understand that there is a pronounced bureaucratic imperative that tilts towards wasteful overlap and duplication – but it’s past time to end it with respect to federal funding of broadband projects.
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