State

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.

Conexon Partner and former Federal Communications Commission planner Jonathan Chambers warned that the FCC’s broadband mapping effort is headed for disaster—flagging potential issues with state-level mapping efforts which he said could slow or bias the funding allocation process for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program support. There are two primary problems at the federal level. The first is the method Congress has chosen for calculating the ratio of BEAD funding given to each state on top of the baseline $100 million allocation that has been granted across the board. Un

Minnesota is poised for an unprecedented windfall of money to help build high-speed internet in rural areas; estimating $550 million in extra cash. This will bring Minnesota up to $650 million for broadband from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The final amount Minnesota will get won’t be known until later, and it’s dependent on maps of areas without access to broadband that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) needs to update. In addition, Minnesota must submit a plan for how it would use the money over a five-year period.

Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted (OH-R), who is also Director of the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation (OWT), awarded four training providers located throughout the state with $592,215 to support 410 broadband or 5G-related credentials through the Individual