DOT's Handling of C-Band Dispute Gets Little Mention at Senate Commerce Hearing

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told the Senate Commerce Committee Tuesday he “had dialogue” with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson on collaborating to ensure there aren’t future interagency spectrum policy disputes on the scale of the 5G C-band rollout fracas earlier this year among the FCC, FAA, NTIA, wireless carriers and the aviation industry. Senate Commerce members focused almost no attention on the issue, which also came up during a Senate Appropriations Transportation Subcommittee hearing last week (see 2204280064). Buttigieg repeatedly backed Senate Commerce members’ calls for legislation to set up a national autonomous vehicle regulatory framework, which has been on the backburner in recent years.

“There’ve been a lot of discussions” recently among federal agencies about “how to get ahead” of future policy infighting “because we know there will be more spectrum overlap and conflict issues” in the future, Buttigieg said in response to a question from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.: “It’s important for them to be addressed before any kind of deployment is looming.” AT&T and Verizon agreed in January to temporarily pause plans to begin 5G C-band operations near some airports (see 2201180065).

The C-band aviation safety dispute “was partly the consequence of regulators not all being on the same page before” a 5G rollout on the spectrum was imminent, Buttigieg said. Davidson and Raimondo said they’re “committed to working” to reach a more permanent resolution of the C-band issues and the White House “also is encouraging that all the different players,” including the FCC and DOD “are at the table so that we can have the smoothest possible process for dealing with these issues as they come up in the future,” Buttigieg said.

The C-band dispute “went on for a while before it … reared its head” in a more public way, Capito said. “We don’t want to lose our expansion of 5G. We already know we’re … a little behind on some of that, so resolutions of those kinds of conflicts on the front end are certainly going to save time and money and move us along.”

“My early impression, certainly based on the exchanges today, is that" interest in AV legislation "is bipartisan and so my hope is, just as we had a bipartisan infrastructure law, that we might have bipartisan action on AVs,” Buttigieg told reporters after the hearing.

“There is more that” the Transportation Department “can be doing with our existing authorities” on AVs, “but also we very much believe we need to work with Congress to have a legislative framework that adequately contemplates these kinds of vehicles becoming more widespread,” Buttigieg said during the hearing in response to a question from Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.

Peters cited a letter he and 11 other Senate Democrats sent Buttigieg last week urging DOT to adopt “an appropriate regulatory framework” for AVs. U.S. “competitors on the global stage -- particularly the Chinese government -- have significantly invested in autonomous and connected vehicle technologies,” the senators wrote. “That’s why securing the benefits associated with autonomous vehicles while lifting up our communities and workers will require a nuanced -- and proactive -- approach to policymaking.”

“One day I think we all know that cars will be both electric and they will be autonomous as well,” Peters said during the hearing. The only open questions are whether “those cars will be made here in America” and whether “we will enact policies today to achieve the best outcomes for workers.” He pressed Buttigieg during the hearing on whether he agrees “we can both embrace new technology, like autonomous vehicles, while opening up opportunities for current transportation workers in addition to creating new jobs.” DOT is “interested in making sure that this transition” to AVs “is principally made in America, that it creates more opportunity,” Buttigieg said. “It can, but we need to provide the right kind of policy.”

Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., also noted his yearslong interest in passing a bipartisan AV legislative package, but “in the absence” of such a measure “it is essential for” DOT “to establish a framework for the testing and deployment” of AVs. “Measures such as granting exemption petitions or updating relevant regulations are crucial to modernizing vehicle safety standards and gathering relevant safety data to ensure that the U.S. maintains its leadership on this important technology,” he said.