National Telecommunications and Information Administration

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is collaborating with eight states to broaden and update the national broadband availability map. The eight states – California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia – will contribute data and other inputs to the map. NTIA expects to seek participation from additional states, territories and federally recognized tribes that have broadband programs or related data-collection efforts.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued a Request for Comments (RFC) seeking public input on the development of a comprehensive, long-term National Spectrum Strategy. The strategy must accomplish several goals, including increasing spectrum access, improving spectrum sharing, enhancing spectrum management, and leveraging ongoing research and development activities.

America continues to make significant strides in reducing the digital divide among school-age children. In 2017, 14 percent of the US population between ages 6 and 17 lived in homes with no Internet service, down from 19 percent in 2015. Still, significant challenges remain, especially for the approximately 7 million school-age children that lived in households without home Internet service in 2017.

Botnets and automated, distributed attacks threaten our nation’s Internet infrastructure. Solving this and other cybersecurity challenges is a top priority for the Trump Administration. To address these threats, the Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security have developed a road map that charts a path forward, setting out steps to stop the cyber threat to our internet infrastructure. It outlines a plan for coordination among government, civil society, technologists, academics, and industry sectors to develop a comprehensive strategy for fighting these threats.

As a critical step in delivering on President Donald Trump’s call for development of a national spectrum strategy, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has asked federal agencies to report their future spectrum needs over the next 15 years. The reports will help ensure the federal government is optimizing utilization of the nation’s spectrum resources and meeting the needs of spectrum users, including critical federal missions that serve the American public. Agencies must submit their initial reports by Feb 21, 2019 and provide final reports by April 23, 2019.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 directs the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to update the national broadband availability map in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission and the states. NTIA is to acquire and display available third-party data sets to the extent it is able to negotiate its inclusion to augment data from the FCC, other federal government agencies, state government, and the private sector. NTIA intends to collect broadband availability data at a more granular level than that available via the FCC Form 477 process.

Here's five important trends that are driving broadband access and digital inclusion in the United States. Underlying these trends is the drive to streamline regulation and create the incentive for broadband infrastructure investment.