“The overwhelming interest in this first round of funding shows the private sector is stepping up,” says NTIA’s Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications & Information
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration said that it has received 127 applications asking for $1.39 billion in funding to support testing, research and development of open and interoperable wireless networks.
Those requests are nearly ten times as much funding as NTIA will make available in the first funding round. In fact, it very nearly comes to the full total that the federal government plans to award over the 10-year span of the program.
The Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund is a $1.5 billion, decade-long program that is part of the CHIPS and Science Act passed last year and focuses on federal government’s efforts to promote a secure supply chain and open approaches to network infrastructure. The first round of funding, with initial awards expected to be announced in August, comprises only one-tenth of the total, or about $140.5 million.
Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Alan Davidson said that the fund “will address the urgent need to increase the resilience, diversity and security of the wireless equipment market.
“The overwhelming interest in this first round of funding shows the private sector is stepping up to meet that need,” Davidson continued. “These are the important first steps in this critical project to help us drive competition, strengthen our supply chain, and provide our allies additional trusted, innovative choices.”
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Based on feedback from industry stakeholders that NTIA gathered through public comment and a listening session, the first funding round for the telecom supply chain innovation fund is meant to focus on expanding and improving testing and R&D that will “demonstrate the viability of new approaches to wireless like open radio access networks (Open RAN) and remove barriers to adoption.”
Specifically, the funding will go to support expansion of “industry-accepted testing and evaluation” focusing on “interoperability, performance, and/or security of open and interoperable, standards-based 5G radio access networks” and developing or improving the testing of those network and/or their component parts.
NTIA has said that later funding opportunities in the course of the program “will build upon the foundational work” of the first round and focus on “creating an ecosystem for wireless innovation built by the U.S. and its global allies.”
According to preliminary information from NTIA, the vast majority of first-round funding requests focused on testing and evaluation activities, rather than R&D projects. Applicants sought $1.2 billion for testing and evaluation, and only $146 million for activities that were categorized as R&D.