Senate Republicans Press Commerce Dept. on Project LEIA Estimates Hurting Satellite ISPs
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz of Texas and two other panel Republicans are claiming that the Commerce Department’s Project Local Estimates of Internet Adoption is “manipulating census data to suppress the number of American households connected to high-speed…
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internet via wireless and satellite technologies,” an omission that appears “politically motivated to disenfranchise alternative satellite broadband providers.” The Project LEIA website “claims its estimates offer reliable data on internet adoption for all U.S. counties,” but “it fails to mention the exclusion of millions of American households who rely on wireless and satellite technologies for internet access,” Cruz and the other GOP senators said in a Thursday letter to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson and Census Bureau Director Robert Santos. Cruz and the other senators, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, said the Project LEIA omissions are aimed at hurting SpaceX’s Starlink. They compare the act to an earlier FCC decision to bar Starlink from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (see 2312140048) to punish CEO Elon Musk. “This omission results in systemic undercounting and data bias. When the data are wrong, policy outcomes will inevitably suffer.” It “underscores the current administration’s prioritization of politics over sound policy -- an approach that has sabotaged” the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program “and perpetuates misinformation about broadband in America,” the senators said in the letter, released Friday. They want Davidson and Santos to respond by Nov. 14. NTIA has “received the letter and will respond through the proper channels," a spokesperson emailed. The Census Bureau didn’t comment.