NTIA Blog

By Arielle Roth, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information

During National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week (April 12 to 18), we recognize the dedicated professionals who answer 9-1-1 calls and coordinate lifesaving responses every hour of every day. They are the backbone of our nation’s emergency response system.

To mark the week, and see this work firsthand, I toured the Fairfax County, Virginia, Department of Public Safety Communications (DPSC), where we saw how AI tools are helping triage non-emergency calls—which make up about half of the center’s total call volume—reducing hold times and allowing telecommunicators to focus on the most urgent situations. 

This visit builds on a recent trip to the Dallas Police Department’s 9-1-1 Center, where I met with telecommunicators to hear more about what they need to do their jobs effectively. 

Almost 57 years after President Richard Nixon’s long-distance telephone call to the Apollo 11 astronauts—via radio—Artemis II marked mankind’s return to the lunar neighborhood. Following through on President Trump’s Executive Order on Ensuring American Space Superiority, NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS) lab has helped to power Americans’ historic return, including by developing a model for understanding how communications signals travel on the Moon and between the Moon and spacecraft. 

Our return to the Moon is a gateway for future space travel, economic development, and innovation—and U.S. leadership in spectrum innovation is critical to this effort. 

It was full steam ahead for the BEAD program this week, as NTIA works to get the program over the finish line and considers its next phase: how to effectively invest the remaining BEAD funds.

On Monday, Assistant Secretary of Commerce and NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth announced that NTIA has now approved 50 out of 56 BEAD Final Proposals from states and territories, moving one step closer to ensuring universal broadband availability across America.

The next day, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, where he detailed the success of the Trump Administration’s Benefit of the Bargain reforms in restoring the BEAD program to its statutory mission of achieving universal connectivity in a technology-neutral, competitive, and disciplined manner, while generating $21 billion in savings for taxpayers.

Secretary Lutnick confirmed that $21 billion in BEAD savings would be spent in accordance with the law and highlighted NTIA’s efforts to gather feedback on how to best use the remaining funds.

Researchers from NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS) designed a cross-disciplinary, collaborative workshop to explore ways to reliably expand access to mid-band spectrum.

Expanded access to mid-band spectrum is key to delivering faster wireless networks, fueling innovation, and securing America’s position as the world’s technological powerhouse. Accomplishing it begins with radio-wave propagation models produced with trusted measurements. NTIA’s spectrum laboratory, the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, is leading technical collaboration across academia, industry, and government agencies to openly, accessibly, and comprehensively share all technical aspects of measurement and modeling activities to ensure secure and reliable spectrum use.

The space industry would get new tools under recommendations from NTIA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), further advancing America’s leadership in commercial space. A joint report by NTIA and NASA calls for providing the industry with access to radio frequencies for use in space-to-space communications.

The report recommends expanded spectrum access through a new commercial allocation in the 18 GHz band (18.1-18.6 GHz), which would be paired with an allocation for Federal Government operations. The new, co-primary allocations in this band would provide regulatory certainty for the development of commercial services to meet NASA’s future needs. This aligns with Congress’s direction to NASA to utilize commercial space services whenever possible and to encourage the growth of the commercial space industry. 

The joint report, approved by NTIA’s Interagency Spectrum Advisory Council (ISAC), builds upon actions at the 2023 World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC-23), where the 18 GHz band was allocated for space-to-space links globally.

By Adam Cassady, Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information

Public safety telecommunications professionals are a lifeline for their communities. 

Each and every day, they model the best of public service by answering and dispatching our emergency calls, working 12-hour shifts with frequent overtime, managing multiple emergencies at once, and missing holidays and family events while looking out for their “second families”—the police, fire, and EMS officials who depend on them. 

This week, April 13 to 19, is recognized as National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, and NTIA understands the importance of ensuring that 9-1-1 telecommunicators and emergency responders have access to the innovative and emerging technologies they need to perform their lifesaving work. 

Cutting-edge technology can streamline emergency processes and expedite response. By leveraging these tools, telecommunicators are equipped to provide lifesaving information to address every crisis – from providing CPR to someone who has stopped breathing to identifying the exact location of a stranded motorist trapped in rising water. 

Our nation’s telecommunicators make an immeasurable impact on their communities, and NTIA supports giving these professionals access to future technological enhancements like AI, multimedia capabilities, interoperable networks, and more that will keep their focus where it belongs—on connecting with and providing critical information to first responders in our communities.

NTIA is responsible for the contract for .us – the country code Top Level Domain for the United States (usTLD). Through this contract, NTIA sets policy and other requirements for the usTLD, which serves as an online home for American businesses, individuals, and geographical localities. These policies help make .us functional, secure and unique. For example, the .us “nexus” policy requires a connection between a .us registrant and the United States.

NTIA is initiating a Market Research Request for Information (RFI) to inform a modernization of the usTLD Statement of Work. NTIA is searching for cutting-edge approaches to DNS stability and security, the disruption and mitigation of DNS abuse, usTLD nexus policy enforcement, and privacy-respecting registration data access. By requesting industry and community input, we are also promoting evidence-based policy development, which we expect will benefit American consumers and usTLD users. 

The DNS landscape is dynamic, and the security and stability of the usTLD are paramount to our national interests. NTIA last updated the Statement of Work in 2019. In keeping with NTIA’s mission to protect and promote the public interest in the digital landscape, we are seeking to modernize the Statement of Work to meet contemporary challenges.  

Last May NTIA launched a request for comment (RFC) on how U.S. government policies can support the development of next-generation commercial wireless “6G” technology. In this post, we discuss NTIA’s work on 6G and the overarching themes included in the comments received in response to the RFC. 

U.S. economic competitiveness and national security depends on access to secure and reliable communications networks, and the technologies driving those networks continue to evolve rapidly. While the characteristics that will distinguish 6G are still being defined in standards, industry is well on its way to envisioning 6G’s transformative potential and its ability to improve on 5G performance, support new use cases, and leverage intelligent edge services.