Department of Commerce

Spectrum policy is a long game, so the successes, failures, and impacts are not generally immediately apparent or recognized. Thinking about Women’s History Month cannot help but bring to mind Anita Longley, a much-admired spectrum pioneer from the NationalTelecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS). Along with her ITS colleague Phil Rice, in the 1970s Longley developed the Longley-Rice propagation model.

I am a Senior Broadband Program Specialist with the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) BroadbandUSA Program promoting the expansion of broadband access across America. In my role, I manage the BroadbandUSA Technical Assistance Program and serve as a principal liaison between BroadbandUSA and key strategic partners and external stakeholder groups.  This includes representatives from state and local governments, telecommunications companies, for-profit and non-profit corporations and colleges and universities.

Among the Department of Commerce's accomplishments in 2020:

In response to President Trump’s Executive Orders signed August 6, 2020, the Department of Commerce is prohibiting transactions relating to mobile applications WeChat and TikTok to safeguard the national security of the United States. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has demonstrated the means and motives to use these apps to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and the economy of the US.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in the Department of Commerce further restricted access by Huawei Technologies and its non-US affiliates on the Entity List to items produced domestically and abroad from US technology and software. In addition, BIS added another 38 Huawei affiliates to the Entity List, which imposes a license requirement for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and modified four existing Huawei Entity List entries.