Senators Have Questions; Roth Has...Answers

On March 27, 2025, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing to consider the confirmation of Arielle Roth, President Donald Trump's nominee for Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information. If confirmed as the Assistant Secretary and head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), Roth would oversee $48.2 billion in broadband infrastructure and adoption funding Congress allocated through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. During the hearing, Roth answered questions from Senate Commerce Committee members about the future of this funding and other telecommunications policy priorities under the NTIA's jurisdiction. Soon after, committee members advanced her nomination to the full Senate for review. This week, the Committee released the text of Roth's responses to written questions from senators on the panel, providing us more insight into what it might look like if Roth heads the NTIA. In March 2025, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick launched a review of the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, which Congress established in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. Secretary Lutnick’s stated goal for the review is to get the “benefit of the bargain.” To accomplish this, Secretary Lutnick reportedly plans to shift BEAD away from the deployment of fiber networks and toward the deployment of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks.