The Power of a Letter of Support

The newly released Virginia proposed Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant rules highlight an issue that was included in the original grant rules. The BEAD program gives significant power to local governments through local letters of support. Internet service providers (ISP) have always asked for letters of support for broadband grants, and most communities have handed them out like Halloween candy. The Virginia BEAD grants rules and I think most other states as well are going to award a significant amount of grant scoring points for an ISP that gets a local letter of support. In the Virginia grant scoring, a letter of support represents 10% of the total points needed for an ISP trying to win a grant. Since most BEAD grants are going to be awarded in rural areas, county governments are the local government entities that will matter the most for BEAD. A county needs to carefully think about the ISPs it wants to support if the county provides a local support letter for only one ISP, that ISP has an instant advantage over others in the grant scoring.