Rachelle Chong

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) Notice of Funding Opportunity for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) and Digital Equity Programs requires a Five Year State Broadband Action Plan in order to tap $100 million of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding. In creating a competent and competitive plan to secure federal broadband funding, states should take into account a number of tips. First, states should designate or form a State Broadband Office to centralize broadband efforts, resources, and goals.

Dora the Explorer knew that maps were important to find one’s way. Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is still learning that lesson, particularly when it comes to broadband for the nation’s schools, libraries, healthcare providers, and other community anchor institutions. It’s no secret that the FCC’s current broadband maps are flawed.

[Commentary] California, like the rest of the country, still has much work to do to close the digital divide. The divide is due to the cost of broadband for consumers and the expense involved in deploying infrastructure in rural and remote areas. Laying fiber optic cable in a state as large and geographically complex as California is expensive. Incentives have proved necessary to entice competitive internet service providers to make the required capital outlays and investments in infrastructure. This is why during our terms of government service, we conceptualized and helped found the California Advanced Services Fund program at the PUC.

Despite this success, the California Advanced Services Fund will soon be out of money. Per the program’s public records, there are currently 16 broadband infrastructure projects, totaling $154 million, pending approval, but only $100 million left in the account. And there are many other broadband infrastructure projects that need funding in the state that have yet to apply. If the California Advanced Services Fund is not re-funded, hundreds of thousands of California households will remain without high-speed internet access. California will remain a place where a fifth of the people face nearly insurmountable impediments to accessing the employment, educational, health and government resources the rest of us take for granted.

[Rachelle Chong, a Republican, is a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission and of the California Public Utilities Commission. She runs a consulting and law firm in San Francisco. Lloyd Levine, a Democrat, is a former California Assembly member and chair of the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee. He is the co-founder of the UC Riverside Center for Broadband Policy and Digital Literacy, and runs his own consulting firm specializing in technology policy.]