Sens Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) wrote to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Administrator Alan Davidson and stressed that broadband deployment grants should be technology neutral. The message is consistent with what NATE: the Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association, the Wireless Infrastructure Association, Competitive Carriers Association and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association have been advocating for. NTIA recently began accepting applications for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. Its language says NTIA will prioritize fiber projects. “NTIA states that only fiber technology can achieve the scalability needed to meet the evolving needs of consumers over time, as well as to ‘support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services,’” wrote Blackburn and Hagerty in their letter. They also stress that technology neutrality has been the basis for funding distributed by the Federal Communications Commission, such as with the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. The senators urged NTIA to reconsider, saying that a fiber-first rule makes no sense for much of rural America.

As discussed in Keller & Heckman's initial post in this series, the Federal Communications Commission is about to launch its new Broadband Data Collection (BDC) program. The purpose of the BDC is to enable the Federal Communications Commission, acting through its contractor (CostQuest Associates), to develop a comprehensive database of serviceable broadband locations where fixed broadband Internet access service has been or could be installed – the Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric. Starting summer 2022, all facilities-based providers of fixed and mobile broadband Internet access services will be required to submit broadband data on a biannual basis. In this post, Keller & Heckman delves into the who, what, when, and where of the BDC filing obligations and process.

States are looking toward electric utilities for new broadband initiatives. The New York Power Authority (NYPA) will be working with Sherburne Electric, a NYPA municipal electricity customer, to use NYPA’s existing fiber network for the middle-mile connection as Sherburne designs and builds out fiber networks to its 1,800 homes and businesses. The project is part of Gov Kathy Hochul (D-NY)’s $1 Billion ConnectALL initiative that aims to transform the state's digital infrastructure and deliver affordable broadband to millions of residents and businesses. Under ConnectALL, the state will use over $1 billion in public and private investments to connect New Yorkers in rural and urban areas statewide to broadband. In Arkansas, more than a dozen electric cooperatives have partnered to form a new wholesale broadband provider that will leverage their fiber-optic networks to accelerate statewide broadband deployments. Diamond State Networks aims to provide access to 1.25 million rural Arkansans with a combined network covering more than 64 percent of the state’s land mass and more than 50,000 miles of fiber lines. And in Florida, Tri-County Electric Cooperative will be working with broadband provider Conexon Connect on a $65 million project to deploy a 2,400-mile fiber-to-the-home network within the next few years. Conexon was one of the top bidders in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction, and it has also partnered with electric co-ops in Georgia, Colorado, Louisiana and New Hampshire to build fiber broadband networks.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes the largest-ever federal investment in broadband. Pennsylvania could receive as much as $1 billion — enough to seriously move the needle. But the state may now have another, more unique problem. In 2004, Pennsylvania lawmakers gave telephone companies what one critic at the time described as a “virtual veto” over publicly-owned networks they saw as unwelcome competition. But for years afterward, the law was rarely invoked. More recently, local governments flush with federal dollars from two pandemic stimulus packages have begun ambitious broadband projects that place them directly in the crosshairs of that law, which is facing new challenges and fresh scrutiny. Already, the restrictions have prompted officials in the Southern Alleghenies (PA) region to get creative. Instead of working within the confines of the law, local officials decided to sidestep it altogether by creating a separate nonprofit to deal with broadband expansion. In legal proceedings in front of the state Public Utility Commission, the state agency that oversees the phone companies, fundamental questions about how the almost two-decades old law should work are being hashed out for the first time.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) launched a Request for Proposals (RFP) that will award $95 million in broadband grants across the state, applications must be submitted by August 4, 2022 at 4:00 pm. Building on appropriations from both the 2021 and 2022 legislative sessions, this grant round contains the highest-ever amount of funding for the Border-to-Border Broadband Infrastructure grant program. Funding from two sources – state and federal – can be used to reimburse for up to half the cost of the broadband infrastructure deployed. Funding for a single project is capped at $5 million. On the state funding side, in May 2022 Governor Tim Walz  signed legislation appropriating $50 million -- $25M in FY23 and $25M in FY24 – from the state’s general fund for broadband. This bolsters the state’s practice since 2014 of providing state funds to build out broadband service in areas of the state where it is challenging to do so. For federal broadband funding, the remaining $70 million available for grant awards in this round is federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Capital Projects Fund, administered by the U.S. Department of Treasury (Treasury).

New York is continuing to expand broadband internet access statewide through a new initiative called ConnectALL. A replacement for former Gov Andrew Cuomo (D-NY)’s New NY Broadband Program, the ConnectALL initiative is a $1.4 billion program that will use $300 million of state money and $1.1 billion from the federal government. Of the federal money, $800 million comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and $345 million from the American Rescue Plan. The money will allow the state to provide faster internet speeds to areas that are below the recommended speed of 100 Mbps, give a $30 per month internet subsidy for low-income households and provide grants to assist with construction projects to lay fiber optic cables. Gov Kathy Hochul (D-NY) also revoked the state Department of Transportation’s PERM 75 permitting program – known as the Fiber Tax – that allowed the department to impose a fiber optic fee, charging internet service providers thousands of dollars per mile on fiber installations in the state’s right of way.

A new effort to install a fiber network could soon bring high speed broadband throughout Rocky Mount (NC). But some living in rural areas outside the city limits have concerns that the digital divide in their neighborhoods will keep growing. On May 20, city leaders announced telecommunications company Metronet would be spending $20 million to lay a fiber network throughout the city limits, bringing high speed internet as soon as next spring. While Rocky Mount celebrated, neighboring communities said they're worried about being left behind. However, Nash County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robbie Davis said that Nash County (NC) has been working with a Wilmington-based company called CloudWyze to install a county-wide network. Davis said the county had invested $2 million already in the hopes of bringing 90% of residents online by 2025. Neighboring Edgecombe County has been trying to do the same. County Manager Eric Evans said that four companies were bidding for grant money from the state to set up a network there as of late May. But even with $1 million of the county’s federal American Rescue Plan Act funds earmarked for broadband expansion, they won’t be able to bring service to everyone. “Because it’s just so costly to do that, it would probably cost at least $10 million or more in grant funds to do that,” Evans said. “But it certainly will go a long way to help cover the areas that are currently unserved.”

The race to build 6G is on—or, at least, the race to start selling the idea to Washington. 5G  is still being rolled out, and is still only used by about a tenth of mobile phone users around the world (U.S. figures are comparable). It will take years for 5G to come into more widespread use. But it also takes a long time to negotiate what techniques will be implemented in standards, so telecommunications industry types are already looking to the next generation: 6G. The contours of 6G already matter, if not to consumers, to the companies that intend to build out the network. Patents that are deemed “standards-essential” can be worth millions (if not billions) to the companies involved, and standards also have substantial “soft power” as they are deployed around the world. The Next G Alliance, a year-and-a-half-old group involving large companies like Apple, AT&T, Google and Intel is trying to get Washington thinking about its needs early. In a new report, the group attempts to lay out what technologies will need 6G in order to work well, so that engineers can work backwards to figure out what capabilities to design into the standards.