State

Cable companies Charter Communications and Comcast have each raked in at least $100 million in state broadband grants in 2022, leading the pack of operators scrambling to secure government funding for expansion efforts.

One of the hurdles faced by communities pursuing broadband grants is that many grant programs allow incumbent broadband providers to challenge the validity of a grant. The most common challenge is for an incumbent provider to claim that a grant incorrectly includes homes and businesses that already have access to fast broadband. It appears that the purpose of many challenges is to delay the process, with the ultimate hope to derail or cancel grant requests.

With more state and local government agencies prioritizing broadband, experts say it is important to make sure the work they are doing is sustainable. In fact, Merit — an independent nonprofit corporation governed by Michigan’s public universities — is hosting an 

Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) announced $26.6 million in grants to help deliver access to high-speed internet to communities in 10 counties. The grants will help fund the work to make broadband available to almost 15,000 homes, businesses, schools and other public facilities.

Many residents of federally subsidized public and multifamily housing have no access to high-speed internet service. Others may be able to get online only in restricted spaces, such as common areas, or have access in their units that is unreliable or unaffordable. This limited broadband access, meanwhile, can exacerbate long-standing economic and societal inequities.

Digital equity is a key promise of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. If successful, the new law will lead to everyone and every community around the country having the connections and skills they need to fully participate in our increasingly digital economy and society. It seems like a tall order.

A last-minute challenge has stalled broadband installation in a poor northeastern Louisiana community that Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) used as a backdrop for the July 25 launch of 67 grants to extend high-speed Internet to underserved rural communities. The effort to quash the successful bid for East Carroll Parish claims that about two-thirds of the homes set to get internet access are already being served. It’s just one of 26 complaints statewide that threaten to delay the delivery of high-speed Internet to about 400,000 people in rural Louisiana.

States and territories were required to inform the National Telecommunications and Information Administration by July 18 if they intended to participate in the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. After NTIA approves a state’s anticipated planning process (due August 15), BEAD unlocks $5 million to each participating state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico ($1.25 million for the four smaller territories) for initial planning.

The most important decision when designing and building a statewide middle-mile fiber-based network is whether to build a brand new long-distance fiber-optic cable route in areas where none exist, or use strands within an already installed cable via a pre-paid, discounted long-term lease called an IRU. In California for example, its great diversity of population centers, geographic and topographic terrains, weather conditions, and natural hazards greatly influences the presence, or absence, of fiber-based middle-mile infrastructure.

Vermont has been funding a considerable portion of projects undertaken by communications union districts (CUDs) – local organizations representing at least two towns that will own the broadband infrastructure that they deploy. One of these CUDs is NEK (Northeast Kingdom) Broadband, which represents five counties. NEK Broadband expects to need between $165 million and $185 million to achieve the goal of ensuring high-speed broadband internet service is available to the most rural and underserved communities.