The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) charged the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) with establishing the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program and ensuring that BEAD-funded broadband infrastructure projects comply with the Buy America Domestic Content Procurement Preference (Buy America Preference) of the Build America, Buy America Act (BABA). In accordance with BABA, this notice advises that the Department of Commerce (DOC) is proposing to issue a limited, general applicability, nonavailability waiver of the Buy America Domestic Content Procurement Preference (Buy America Preference) to recipients of federal financial assistance under NTIA’s BEAD Program, which will flow down to subrecipients. The waiver details the following:

• Incentivizes the domestic production of specific manufactured products based on strategic prioritization criteria, including network and data security, which will directly expand American job opportunities;
• Promotes broad participation in the BEAD Program;
• Ensures that BEAD Program awardees will have access to the manufactured products necessary to fulfill their obligations under the program;
• Allows funding recipients to continue to provide economic opportunity through innovation and timely deployment of broadband infrastructure, which is recognized to expand job opportunities; and  
• Supports the timely development of critical domestic infrastructure.  

Recipients to whom the waiver applies must report on their purchases of items from foreign sources and as required to ensure BABA compliance. Through this Notice, NTIA seeks public comment on the proposed waiver. Comments are due on or before September 21, 2023.  

Some states will be filing their initial proposals in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband funding program soon if they haven’t already—and once the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) approves a state’s proposal, the state will be eligible to receive 20 percent of its allocation of funds. That 20 percent can be a big number—exceeding $200 million for some states. It’s unlikely, however, that we will see that money being awarded for broadband deployments, as the rules for how the initial funding can be used are somewhat restrictive. A spokesperson for the NTIA said, “The primary use anticipated for a subset of the 20 percent of initial funds will be use by eligible entities to fund the conduct of their state challenge processes and their subgrantee programs. Once those are complete, eligible entities will submit their final proposal unlocking the remaining funds to implement their projects holistically. We recommend states take this approach prior to looking to use funds for other uses to ensure their deployment projects can be funded in full.” The spokesperson also said that the NTIA doesn’t automatically release the initial 20 percent of BEAD funds when a state’s initial proposal is approved. To access the funding, states and territories must submit an initial proposal funding request, which is different from the initial proposal. “This is essentially the administrative grants process that requires a budget and description of the use of the funds,” the spokesperson said. 

AT&T is no stranger to public-private partnerships, with deals in place with municipal entities in Indiana, Kentucky and Texas to name a few. It’s also widely expected to participate in the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program given the 21 states comprising its footprint will have some $25 billion in funding available. But to hear AT&T’s VP of Broadband Strategic Initiatives Amanda Cacheris tell it, the operator is picky about where it chooses to apply for public dollars. Cacheris said AT&T currently has about 130,000 customer locations it is building with government funding. When it comes to BEAD, she said the company plans to pursue a “state-specific strategy” to ensure the builds will be mutually beneficial. For it to be worth AT&T’s while, there are a few things the operator is looking for. “It has to do with household density, it has to do with the ability to serve multiple geographies, looking at overall footprint, aggregation, and continuity. In fact, in a lot of previous grant projects, the contiguous build is an element of focus,” she said. According to Cacheris, “aggregation” in this case refers to looking at the entire build picture in the aggregate. That includes whether and how AT&T can connect both un- and underserved households, deployment timelines associated with the funding, how the build overlaps with where it has wireless subscribers and towers, where its existing footprint is, and what opportunities it might have to, say, retire some of its legacy copper. She said ultimately AT&T won’t be able to finalize its bidding strategy until the states release the specifics of their grant programs.

Experts at Fiber Connect convened to address the need for new approaches to fiber deployments in challenging environments. Notably, digital twins for network infrastructure emerged as a key strategy for service providers. A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical network that can be created to simulate its performance, test different scenarios, and identify potential issues before physical production. Scott Casey, VP at CycloMedia Technology, a mapping system software company, said he has seen “a pretty significant trend” over the last three or four years toward operators using a digital outside plant environment “as much as possible.” Especially in harsh environments, using a virtualized digital plant means sending less people out in the field into harm's way. “It also means that you can do some of the work that you might have had to do during the winter, you can do it from the desktop, anytime,” added Casey. Just about every company that CycloMedia works with has a digital system, whether it’s through computer-aided design (CAD) or geographic information system (GIS) software, according to Casey. However, the data quality contributing to these systems is lacking.

At the end of July 2023, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $20 million penalty against Q Link and Hello Mobile for not complying with the Customer Propriety Network Information (CPNI). The FCC concluded that the two companies violated the CPNI rules when they failed to protect confidential user data. The companies both had security flaws in their apps that allowed outside access to customer account information. There are stringent privacy rules in place at the FCC for voice providers, but nothing similar for broadband. Other than perhaps invoking an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for allowing leaks of broadband customer information, there are no specific prohibitions in place to stop internet service providers (ISP) from misusing customer data. Telephone companies routinely capture details of customer calling – who you call and who calls you. Telephone companies can’t release this information without a warrant. CPNI rules also require phone companies to keep other customer data secure, such as billing records, credit card numbers, etc. Telephone companies are even prohibited from marketing their own products to customers if a customer opts out of such marketing. The FCC's 2016 broadband privacy rules that were in place for only a short time implemented the same sort of privacy rules as voice, but customers were also given the choice to allow or deny access to their records.