It’s now clear that State Broadband Offices are going to put a lot of pressure on Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) winners to spend grant awards and build networks as quickly as possible. Internet service providers (ISP) generally have the same goal, because getting customers quickly is the best way to make sure an ISP can pay for the network. However, there are numerous reasons why BEAD fiber construction might be delayed:

• Permitting: Contractors must obtain permits to engage in any construction. Since BEAD will largely be constructed in rural areas, the expected problems will come from county governments that are not ready to process permits that could cover a huge portion of the geography in a county.
• Make-Ready: Make-ready is an industry term used to describe any work that must be done first to enable adding fiber to a pole. The effort required with make-ready can range from fairly simple work like trimming back tree branches that would interfere with the construction to the complex effort required to replace poles that can’t accommodate an additional fiber.
• Locating: It’s mandatory that somebody locates existing buried utilities and other underground obstructions before somebody tries to bury new fiber. This is both a safety precaution (because hitting a gas or electric line can be deadly) and an attempt to minimize damage to existing underground utilities.

I’m here today to urge you—city officials, business leaders, educators, digital equity advocates and city residents—to consider moving forward on building a city-wide, city-owned broadband network.  I was asked by a Texas Public Radio reporter a few days ago whether now was the right time, and I said—it’s past time. If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it was that affordable, high speed broadband Internet access is essential for full participation in our society, our economy, our education and health care systems, and our democracy. Access to broadband is not a technical issue, it’s a social and economic justice issue. The vast majority of residents of Bexar County—96%—have a broadband network available to them, according to a 2023 digital inclusion study. Regardless, that same study showed that 18% of county residents don’t have a home broadband connection, and 55% of those with connections rely on mobile hotspots, which are much slower than fixed broadband. The vast majority of those over 370,000 unconnected are low-income residents and people of color, and, in a significant number of zip codes, mostly to the south and east, 37% or more of residents have no home broadband connection.  With average monthly broadband bills of between $50-$100, this should come as no surprise to anyone. Indeed, while privacy concerns and general lack of interest in using the Internet were cited as reasons for lack of connectivity, the price of access and devices was cited as the number one cause. Just imagine the reaction if people learned that 370,000 residents of the county had no electricity or water. They would be outraged. 

[Gigi Sohn is Executive Director of the American Association for Public Broadband and Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate]

A television conference in Washington (DC) aired a proposed remake of one of the bigger spectrum-policy hits of the past decade, although it's not clear what kind of reception "Incentive Auction 2.0" might get. Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr endorsed the idea of a second "incentive auction" during his talk onstage with Madeleine Noland, president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee. Commissioner Carr suggested that after local stations shut down ATSC 1.0 digital broadcasts in favor of ATSC 3.0 (aka NextGen TV), they might be open to releasing some of their unused spectrum to wireless network operators. The former FCC advisor who helped to launch the original incentive auction in 2017 thinks there's potential in returning to that well. "It's a smart idea and Brendan [Carr] is wise to raise it," said Blair Levin, a policy advisor to New Street Research.