NTIA, FCC, States prep for BEAD Broadband Funding Bonanza

Federal and state agencies are gearing up to distribute billions of dollars in broadband grant monies under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is the lead organization tasked with distributing funds, while the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will handle the new low-income subsidy. Both agencies are expected to provide support and advice. NTIA’s main responsibility will be issuing and overseeing the $43.5 billion in grant monies to the states, as well as providing guidance to states as they develop their own plans. Each state and territory will have different organizational and fiscal resources and will receive $100 million in federal money out of a baseline of $5.4 billion spread equally among all. The remaining $38 billion in funding will be allocated on a proportional basis as a fraction of the number of unserved and underserved households in the state out of the national total of unserved and underserved households. Additional monies will first be allocated to unserved areas that don’t have today’s FCC baseline of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps then to underserved areas lacking reliable 100 Mbps/20 Mbps service, with a technical emphasis on projects providing broadband network solutions with low latency and easily scalable networks that are capable of not only supporting today’s 100 Mbps/20 Mbps minimum needs but “easily scalable” future growth over time.