-
Many of the Volume 2s submitted by states are 300-400 pages long
-
NTIA has announced eight Volume 2 approvals
-
It expects to announce a steady drumbeat of new Volume 2 approvals every week
Evan Feinman, director for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program with NTIA, provided an update on the program at last week’s Connect(X) conference in Atlanta.
All states have submitted their Volume 1 proposals to NTIA. Volume 1s are primarily focused on the challenge process, whereby ISPs, municipalities and non-profit groups can challenge the Federal Communication Commission’s broadband map to further refine it in terms of what locations are not served by broadband speeds of 100/20 Mbps.
Feinman said, “The FCC map is the best that has been made, but it’s not good enough.” That’s why the NTIA is running challenge processes in each state and applying various policies the states laid out. “States had a lot of leeway in how they approached it,” he said.
At this point, Feinman said, “Those Volume 1s are nearly all approved. The remaining handful are on a fast path.”
A check of NTIA’s Progress Dashboard today shows that only Florida, Maryland and Minnesota have yet to have their Volume 1s approved.
For Volume 2 states must address 18 requirements that are explained in NTIA’s Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO).
The requirements include things such as identification of an extremely high-cost per location threshold in the state; an explanation of how the state will use strong labor standards and protections; and a detailed plan to competitively award sub-grants.
“Sub-grantees” are the internet service providers who will ultimately win the state grants and deploy the broadband to unserved and underserved locations.
Last week, Feinman said, “We are rolling through Volume 2s, recognizing the scale of those documents. Many of these Volume 2s are 300-400 pages of single spaced. They’re quite dense.”
He said BEAD is at an “inflection point.” The blueprints are in place and are being finalized.
“While it is not happening without flaw, it is happening broadly,” said Feinman. “Each state is moving between the broad guardrails. We’re seeing significant refinement of the FCC map. Hundreds of thousands of locations have been refined.”
Next will come the actual implementation process for BEAD. “The next phase is the most critical,” said Feinman. “States will announce the eligible locations for BEAD funding and the manner in which they will accept bids.”
He said states are taking a lot of different approaches. Some are creating geographical boundaries based on county lines, while others are using census blocks or school districts.
The important thing will be ensuring that sub grantee selections are fair, open and competitive, he said.
The NTIA also wants to make sure that deployments prioritize fiber but also allow less costly technologies when necessary.
With the ending of the Affordable Connectivity Program, Feinman was questioned how that will affect BEAD.
He said: “Government support of broadband infrastructure is about solving a math problem for areas that don’t support investment by private capital.”
Each state was required, in Volume 2, to lay out a low-cost service option with ACP and without ACP. “The expiration of ACP will have a significant impact on the construction of rural broadband networks,” he said.
Even though NTIA expects sub-grantee winners to pick up 25% of the total project cost for BEAD projects, “that’s a baseline expectation,” said Feinman. “In competitive areas we expect that match to go up. Not everywhere needs a 75% subsidy. But there are high-cost areas where a match is not expected. We also anticipate states will bring us additional areas where they need to waive the match.”
He said the match doesn’t have to be all cash. There could also be match contributions in the form of pole make-ready fees, for example.
