How Are States Managing the Broadband Billions? Highlights from an Expert Panel

On September 29, the American Enterprise Institute hosted an expert panel to discuss states’ plans for managing the billions of dollars allotted to broadband expansion. The panel featured Duke University’s Michelle Connolly, North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s Nate Denny, ConnectLA’s Veneeth Iyengar, and Kansas Office of Broadband Development’s Jade Piros de Carvalho. Piros de Carvalho highlighted the need for solutions to the labor shortage that the deployment process will soon be facing, as well as the need for streamlined permitting processes. In North Carolina, according to Denny, local capacity is a major challenge; the state is figuring out how to both create opportunities for local voices––while also supplementing that planning capacity, the mapping expertise, the analysis needed at the local level––to figure out where BEAD investments make sense. For an edited and abridged transcript of key events from the panel, visit here.