White House Budget Proposal Prioritizes ConnectED, Spectrum, USF

The White House included provisions on school and rural broadband, spectrum license fees, the FCC’s USF and more in its proposed $3.9 trillion 2015 budget, partially revealed Tuesday in a 218-page document and requiring the approval of Congress (http://1.usa.gov/1c5yFWg). It would include a $56 billion Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative, which promises funding toward various goals in this sphere. The administration will roll out its budget in two phases, the first of which started Tuesday, and then post some other parts a week later. Congressional Republicans have already complained of the broader details.

The Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative also would “enact [a] Spectrum License User Fee and allow the FCC to auction predominantly domestic satellite services,” said a table listed deep in the budget document. The item is projected to reduce the deficit by $225 million in 2015, $325 million in 2016, $425 million in 2017 and $550 million every year from 2018 through 2024. The White House has unsuccessfully tried to introduce such a fee provision in past years, across multiple administrations.

CTIA and NAB already announced opposition to a spectrum license fee proposal. “The Administration can call its proposal fees, but as a practical matter, a levy, such as what they proposed, would operate like a tax,” said CTIA Vice President Jot Carpenter in a statement. “Raising taxes on spectrum users will neither encourage investment nor advance consumers’ adoption of wireless broadband services, and for both reasons, CTIA is opposed to new spectrum fees.” NAB will continue to oppose the provision, a spokesman said, saying the proposed fee has been a recurring attempt of presidential budgets going back about two decades.

Budget details for the FCC were not available Tuesday, and the FCC did not comment. The budget document did propose “additional investments of over $20 million for the Federal Communications Commission to make critical reforms to its Universal Service Fund program, make information technology upgrades, and provide robust program support for high priority 2015 spectrum auctions,” all mentioned in the longer document Tuesday. President Barack Obama’s budget document cites as a “common sense spending reform” the reallocation of spectrum to promote the economy. The budget would “introduce new mechanisms to promote more efficient allocation of spectrum to high priority uses,” saving $5 billion, it said.

The Commerce Department requested $8.8 billion for the 2015 budget, with $51 million to be slated for NTIA. That money would go to “efforts to free up 500 MHz of spectrum through spectrum auctions, which will increase commercial access to wireless broadband spectrum and reduce the deficit by nearly $20 billion over the next 10 years,” as well as $7.5 million slated for an Internet Policy Center housed within NTIA, which would “enhance the Department of Commerce’s coordination and policymaking across broadband stakeholders,” the department said in a news release, with the posting of the full budget request set for next week. The budget “provides $7 billion to realize the vision of a fully interoperable public safety and first responder broadband network through FirstNet,” the release said. FirstNet revenue is still expected to come from the FCC spectrum auctions.

The budget “prioritizes high-tech manufacturing and innovation, U.S. trade and investment, infrastructure, skills training, unleashing government data and gathering and acting on environmental intelligence, while also cutting red tape to help businesses grow,” said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker in a statement, urging Congress to work with Obama to pass it.

Commerce’s budget would also provide $680 million to the labs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology “to accelerate advances in top research priorities including advanced manufacturing, forensics, cybersecurity and disaster resilience, and improve scientific facilities,” it said in the release.

Obama flagged ConnectED in his budget message, preceding all the budget details. “This year, the FCC is making a down payment on this goal by connecting more than 15,000 schools and 20 million students over the next two years, without adding a dime to the deficit,” Obama told Congress. “To ensure students receive the full benefit of this connectivity, the Budget invests in training for teachers in hundreds of school districts across the country.”

"The Budget proposes $200 million for a ConnectEDucators initiative to ensure that students receive the full benefit of this connectivity by providing professional development opportunities and high-quality digital instructional resources to teachers to help them make effective use of these new resources,” the budget said in its section on the Department of Education. “The Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative would add $300 million to this initiative to provide a total of 100,000 teachers in 500 school districts across the United States with access to professional development in this area.”

The budget also proposes to help with rural broadband deployment, with provisions included in the sections detailing the Agriculture Department budget. “Roughly 25 percent of rural households lack access to high speed internet,” the Agriculture budget sections said. “The Budget proposes to double the current funding for broadband grants that serve the neediest, most rural communities, which are least likely to have access to high-speed broadband infrastructure.” The funding would help 16 rural communities, said the budget. Broadband telecom loans would principally amount to $44.24 million, going toward different loan programs that currently exist, according to the budget, which specifies that $20.37 million would “remain available until expended, for a grant program to finance broadband transmission in rural areas eligible for Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program benefits,” it said.