Incumbent Internet Service Provider Challenges Hinder Broadband Grants

One of the most annoying aspects of the current federal broadband grants is the ability of incumbent internet service providers (ISPs) to challenge the validity of grant requests. In the typical challenge, the incumbents claim that they are offering fast broadband and that an applicant should not be able to overbuild them. The challenges put a burden on anybody filing for a grant since they must somehow prove that incumbent broadband speeds are slower than 25/3 Mbps. There are easy and obvious fixes to this; one simple fix would be that grants that ask to build fiber over existing DSL should be free from challenges. Another easy fix would be to stop talking about 25/3 Mbps as a meaningful definition of broadband. If these grants only allowed challenges for claims of 100/20 Mbps, then all of the challenges from telcos would be neutered. Unfortunately, the upcoming Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) grant rules include a challenge process, so we’re going to get to see this process repeated. If there were a huge number of challenges in prior grant programs, it’s hard to imagine what we’re going to see with the $42.5 billion BEAD grant program.

[Doug Dawson is President of CCG Consulting.]