Supporting Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program Grantees

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Round-Up for the Week of June 24-28, 2024

The National Telecommunications Information Administration's (NTIA) $3 billion Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) aims to expand access to and adoption of broadband service on tribal land. NTIA is distributing these funds through two rounds of grant funding; NTIA finished announcing awards for the first round of funding in September of 2023, and the application period for the second funding round closed in March 2024. TBCP as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Tribes and other eligible entities to close the digital divide.

By law, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) must review, every six months until funds are expended, the grants awarded under this program in the prior six months and provide, if any, recommendations to address waste, fraud, and abuse. The GAO has released its fifth such report, focusing specifically on NTIA's implementation of the first round of Tribal Broadband Connectivity funding.

In its report, the GAO seeks to answer four questions about Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program implementation. The following is a summary of the agency's findings for each subject area addressed in its report.

1. Who is Receiving Funding?

Based on GAO's analysis of the first funding round, 226 TBCP awards reached 31 tribal recipients that had not recently participated in or received broadband service from providers that received funding from eight other key federal broadband programs. For example, tribal officials from Healy Lake Village said that they would use this $500,000 award—their first broadband grant—to deploy a fixed wireless network that would reach the entire community.

Tribal entities have historically been at a disadvantage competing for federal broadband funding for a number of reasons. For example, most of the programs—like Federal Communications Commission’s high-cost program and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect program—are not designed specifically for tribal entities. Thus, tribal entities must compete with other eligible entities including well-established telecommunications providers with more resources and experience in applying for funding. Further, smaller Tribes or Tribes just beginning to develop their own broadband networks are also at a disadvantage relative to larger Tribes with established, tribally owned broadband providers with an eligible telecommunications carrier (ETC) designation. In some cases, although the TBCP recipient had received some level of service from a provider who had received federal support, TBCP enabled the Tribe to develop its own network to reach unserved parts of the community. 

2. What Are Recipients' Plans for the Program Funding, and Do They Need Assistance From NTIA?

GAO found that recipients of TBCP funding had varied plans for network ownership and financial sustainability but that many would benefit from additional NTIA assistance. Further, almost half of recipients with infrastructure deployment projects plan to own and operate their broadband networks. About 43 percent of recipients with infrastructure projects indicated they plan to own and operate the infrastructure to be deployed with the award. Some recipients were established tribal providers prior to TBCP, while others intend to establish their own network providers. 

Additionally, GAO found that half of recipients with infrastructure deployment projects planned to access other federal broadband funding for financial sustainability. Over half of recipients with infrastructure projects indicated in their applications that they planned to use other federal funding sources to support the project’s ongoing financial sustainability. Because applicants were not required to identify all potential sources of funding in their application, there may be additional applicants that will need to access other federal funds to support their networks’ financial sustainability. Recipients with infrastructure projects mentioned the FCC's Affordable Connectivity Program and Universal Service Fund programs, including the high-cost program, most frequently as sources of ongoing support. Specifically, 36 percent mentioned one or both funding sources.

Because of the challenges inherent in providing broadband service to tribal areas, TBCP recipients—especially those that planned to rely on federal programs with limited funding or that are difficult to access—may need additional technical assistance from NTIA or financial support during project implementation to ensure the viability of the new network. A tribal telecommunications association GAO interviewed, and NTIA officials, expressed concern that it will be difficult to sustain networks built under TBCP. Specifically, these networks intend to serve areas that have not previously attracted private-sector investment because private-sector providers do not believe they are financially viable based on location, density, income levels, and other factors. One study estimated total annual operating costs for tribal networks to be $1.2 billion. Even when federal funding incentivizes private-sector investment in these areas, challenges persist. 

While the law creating TBCP does not require projects to be financially sustainable, one of the purposes of TBCP is to improve quality of life by expanding broadband access in Native American communities. If broadband networks built under TBCP are unable to sustain operations, the program will not have fulfilled its potential to expand access in these communities.

3. Has NTIA Provided Technical Assistance to Ensure Financial Sustainability for Grantees?

Following the first-round award announcements for the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, GAO found that NTIA has not gathered additional information or conducted additional analysis related to the financial sustainability of projects. NTIA officials focused their risk assessment activities on information provided during the pre-award phase. These risk assessments did not account for developments since then. For example, NTIA considered applicant plans to access additional federal funding streams lower risk, but over one-third of the recipients planned to access federal programs that have ended or require ETC status they do not currently have. Other recipient plans do not include other federal funding sources; these recipients are relying on the revenue base they can reach or are being funded through other revenues available to the tribal recipient, which increased the risk of their financial sustainability according to NTIA’s own analysis.

Given the difficulties Tribes face in obtaining an ETC designation from the relevant state or the FCC, the May 2024 end of the Affordable Connectivity Program, and the high costs of operating networks in remote areas, tribal recipients may struggle to ensure the financial sustainability of their new networks without targeted technical assistance from NTIA.

In addition, NTIA’s plans for monitoring activities focus on issues such as organizational capacity, administrative expenses, progress on environmental review, and reporting requirements. The planned monitoring activities do not address the project’s financial sustainability. 

GAO's leading practices for managing broadband grant programs identifies project monitoring as a leading practice. Key activities associated with project monitoring include: identifying issues and design and taking corrective actions; and requiring periodic reviews, including progress reports. Periodic reviews during the funding period of projects’ expected financial sustainability could enable NTIA to provide timely, targeted technical assistance to support projects and information to Congress as well as to the Executive Office of the President, particularly if projects planned to rely on additional funding sources that became unavailable or may not materialize.

By following leading practices for managing broadband grant programs, NTIA could help tribal recipients identify new sources of operating funding while protecting tribal interests and report on any additional needs to sustain the projects to Congress. Without doing so, NTIA risks not achieving its purpose of improving the quality of life by expanding broadband access in historically underserved Native American communities.

Environmental Review-Specific Assistance

The GAO found that NTIA did not include most of its technical assistance resources for the TBCP environmental review process in its Technical Assistance hub—NTIA’s one-stop online hub for technical assistance resources. The Technical Assistance Hub includes technical assistance resources for several programs, including TBCP, BEAD, and the Broadband Infrastructure Program. For these programs, the Technical Assistance Hub includes technical assistance for program requirements, budgeting and financial management, tips for successful project implementation, and resources for reporting and evaluation.

Instead, NTIA provided most of its key environmental review resources to TBCP recipients at a one-time meeting or in an archived location on its website that is separate from the Technical Assistance Hub. 

NTIA has developed technical assistance resources to help TBCP recipients with environmental reviews including webinars, templates, and frequently asked questions documents. These resources provided information on NTIA’s and recipients’ responsibilities in the environmental review process, including time frames for the environmental reviews, key steps in the environmental review process, and explanations of the different types of environmental reviews. However, many of these resources are not available on the Technical Assistance Hub. The Technical Assistance Hub included a single resource for TBCP awardees—a recording of a webinar on environmental and historic preservation compliance.

Some resources not included on the Technical Assistance Hub could prove useful for TBCP recipients, applicants, and potential applicants. For example, the Categorical Exclusion Extraordinary Circumstances Guidance relating to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) provided TBCP recipients a detailed explanation of the considerations a recipient would need to prepare in written responses to be considered for a categorical exclusion. In comparison, the webinar on environmental and historic preservation compliance, which is available on the Technical Assistance Hub, did not contain information about the specific types of responses recipients must develop to be considered for a categorical exclusion.

GAO found that including information about the environmental review process, such as expected time frames and other information that could affect TBCP recipients’ planning, in a single location available on NTIA’s website could help them better plan their TBCP projects.

4. How Has NTIA Prevented Duplication of Efforts?

While NTIA took steps to identify and resolve duplication before awarding grants, the agency received 25 referrals of potential duplication after it awarded the TBCP grants causing it to pause implementation for those projects and assess these referrals.

For 16 of the 25 projects, NTIA officials said that no duplication existed and allowed the recipient to resume implementation of its TBCP project. For six of the 25 projects, NTIA officials said that the TBCP projects duplicated some part of projects funded by other broadband programs and was continuing to work toward resolution as of March 2024. For three of the 25 awards, NTIA officials said that the TBCP projects were duplicative of other broadband programs and required the recipient to rescope the project to remove duplicated elements before it could resume project implementation.

TBCP recipients whose projects NTIA determined were not duplicative as well as those NTIA required to rescope to remove duplication said that the need to pause implementation created costly delays.

In the first round of TBCP funding, NTIA’s pre-award process for identifying duplication with other federal broadband projects relied on unverified information, did not require applicants to submit complete or consistently formatted project maps, and did not effectively coordinate with other agencies.

These findings are consistent with a July 10, 2023, report by the Commerce Inspector General that found:

• NTIA did not validate tribal self-certification. NTIA allowed tribal governments to self-certify broadband service availability for an applicants proposed project area. NTIA officials said that, at that time, they had to rely on data that overstated broadband access on tribal lands. However, the Commerce Inspector General determined that NTIA did not independently validate whether a proposed service area overlapped with funding areas for other federal grant programs. Instead, NTIA required TBCP applicants to repeatedly state that their project area did not have broadband service or another project committed to providing it with service.
• NTIA did not require applicants to submit sufficient project maps. NTIA did not require applicants to submit maps that included key information about their proposed service area, such as existing or proposed fiber lines. Officials from another federal agency said some of the earlier batches of project map data provided by NTIA were inaccurate representations of TBCP projects, which created difficulties in identifying areas of duplication.
• NTIA’s coordination with other federal agencies did not identify duplication in some cases. NTIA was directed to coordinate with other agencies to identify duplicative broadband funding, but this coordination missed at least nine instances of duplication. According to NTIA officials, when NTIA began awarding TBCP funds, it held ad-hoc meetings with USDA and FCC to discuss potentially duplicative projects. NTIA and USDA began to meet regularly to discuss potentially duplicative TBCP projects in February 2023, after most TBCP awards from the first round of funding were announced. NTIA officials also said that federal programs’ different requirements for tribal consent can make it unclear which areas had existing enforceable agreements to provide broadband service and thus identify duplication.

After the Commerce Office of the Inspector General issued recommendations in July 2023 for NTIA to improve how it identified duplication, NTIA added requirements for its second round of TBCP funding. NTIA outlined the following additional requirements in its July 2023 notice of funding opportunity:

• Validating tribal self-certification of unserved status. NTIA will validate tribal self-certification statements that an area is unserved by comparing the service area to, among other things, FCC’s National Broadband Map, which NTIA officials said will be the official source for determining if an area is served. They said that applicants must formally challenge the FCC map if they disagree with it.
• Collecting complete, standardized information about proposed TBCP project areas. NTIA will require TBCP applicants to submit maps in a standard format that include proposed and existing fiber lines, tribal boundaries, and tribal residential locations. NTIA officials said standardized maps will make it easier to identify potential duplication.

In addition, NTIA created a more formal five-step process for the second round of TBCP to analyze and evaluate applicant information before awarding grants. According to NTIA, these steps include:

1. Analyzing applicant project areas with current and pending federally funded projects and consulting with state broadband offices and/or tribal entities;
2. Sharing its duplication analysis with other federal agencies;
3. Holding discussions with the agencies to identify duplication areas;
4. Working with the grantee to adjust grant applications as appropriate; and
5. Reviewing all potential grantee project areas again and providing other agencies 15 days to review the final potential grantees for duplication prior to final award.

GAO Recommendations

The GAO made the following three recommendations to NTIA:

1. NTIA should provide technical assistance throughout the funding period to support recipients that are unable to implement their financial sustainability plans.
2. NTIA should report to Congress on the resources necessary to ensure the financial sustainability of TBCP infrastructure projects.
3. NTIA should include all key technical assistance for the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Programs environmental review process in a single location on NTIA’s website.

Quick Bits

• Digital Equity Act at a Glance
• Biden-Harris Administration Awards $9 Million to Nevada to Advance Digital Inclusion Efforts
• American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Island, and the U.S. Virgin Islands’ Digital Equity Plan Accepted
• FCC Releases July 2024 Open Meeting Agenda

Weekend Reads

• Promoting Digital Equity by Automating Enrollment in Consumer Support Programs
• The faster the better? Advanced internet access and student performance
• Broadband Access in Tribal Areas Lags Rest of the Nation

ICYMI from Benton

• The Kansas Affordability Plan
• Washington State's Plan for Affordable Broadband
• The Future of Affordable Broadband: Life after the Affordable Connectivity Program
• Where the Puck is Going: The Close of the ACP and Coming USF Reform
• North Carolina's Approach to Digital Equity and Education

Upcoming Events

Jul 2––Filling in the Holes after BEAD (Appalachian Regional Commission)

Jul 10––Power of Partnership: State Strategies for Digital and Educational Equity (Benton Institute for Broadband & Society)

Jul 12––Tech Platforms and the 1st Amendment: Impact of Supreme Court Rulings (Congressional Internet Caucus)

Jul 18––July 2024 Open Federal Communications Commission Meeting (FCC)

Aug 7––August 2024 Open Federal Communications Commission Meeting (FCC)

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