NTIA Still Considering Some Parts of BEAD, Middle Mile NOFOs: Davidson

Implementing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s broadband programs will “require a lot of partnership” with states and industry to ensure participation, said NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson Wednesday during a Broadband Breakfast event. “This is a generational moment,” Davidson said, and “our chance to ... address these long-standing inequities in our society.”

“The starting gun for us will be May 16,” Davidson said, which is the statutory deadline for the agency to issue notices of funding opportunity for the broadband, equity, access and deployment program and middle-mile program. How much funding is allocated to each state will depend on the FCC’s maps, he said, which are “pretty central to the process.” The maps “have kind of sucked” in the past, Davidson said, and the new maps will be a “source of truth” as NTIA decides how much funding to allocate.

The BEAD program requires that subgrantees offer a low-cost broadband option to receive funding, but how the requirement should be defined and who should be eligible is “an active area of conversation we’re quite interested in getting input on,” Davidson said. Another issue is how to define what constitutes sufficient consultation with local entities, he said (see 2202090037). NTIA has given some thought about potential legal challenges to subgrantee applications, Davidson: “It would be a real shame if litigation got in the way.”

Whether NTIA should establish a matching requirement higher than 25% or allow potential waivers of the requirement is an area the agency “received a lot of commentary” on, Davidson said. “We are keenly focused on the fact that $42 billion doesn’t go as far as it used to,” he said, and some providers may be willing to match 50% of the cost of a project. The FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I reverse auction “gave us some interesting data about what providers at least said they would be willing to do,” he said. Private capital is “an essential component,” Davidson said. “Our hope is that people see the opportunity … that there is going to be a lot of funding” from the federal government for capital expenditures.

NTIA “has put a lot of energy” into its conversations with the FCC on the infrastructure law’s requirement that some funding be set aside for high-cost locations, Davidson said, and it’s “an area where we’re going to be collaborating quite a bit.”

"We’re extremely excited about the middle-mile program,” Davidson said, saying the program will move forward “pretty fast” because there isn’t a planning process or requirement to rely on the FCC’s maps (see 2203210033). The program will act as a “force multiplier that will help us with these affordability and deployment projects down the road,” he said.

The Wireless ISP Association urged House Communications Subcommittee Democrats Wednesday to bolster the IIJA’s “tech-neutral framework” for distributing the measure’s $65 billion in connectivity money. WISPA Chairman Todd Harpest was responding to House Communications Democrats’ March 21 letter to Davidson outlining their IIJA broadband implementation priorities, which included “an emphasis on affordability, digital inclusion, high-capacity networks, competition, and community engagement.”

Congress “wisely rejected prioritizing any given technology over others, realizing that such a choice would undermine the broad goals to connect all Americans to reliable internet access,” Harpest wrote House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone of New Jersey, Communications Chairman Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania and other Democrats. “This all-of-the-above approach invites a diversity of broadband solutions to the table because it recognizes America is not a one-size-fits-all nation.” Though the IIJA money “is generous, prioritizing fiber transmission would mean that large swaths of America would remain unserved,” Harpest said. “Such an outcome would be inequitable" and violate the law’s intent.

NTIA’s rules for distributing its part of the IIJA money “will need to balance many competing interests, but we believe the NTIA will best serve Congress’ intent by focusing on areas truly unserved by 25/3 Mbps broadband services, promoting a diverse palette of tech-neutral solutions, employing accurate mapping, and ensuring robust program transparency,” Harpest said. “States and local communities should be in the driver’s seat when determining what type of technology will serve the unique needs of their communities. Preferring one technology over another would essentially tie the hands of state and local leaders who know their communities best.”

NTIA is focused on building up a team of state broadband coordinators so “every state is gonna have a person at NTIA who they know they can call,” Davidson said (see 2203040049). State broadband offices will be on the “frontline” of the BEAD program, he said, and “need to be in a position to run those grant programs.” Davidson said NTIA is working to ensure all states participate, noting the agency held a meeting with state broadband leaders from 46 states and all territories last month. “Political leadership” needs to engage and be involved in the programs, he said.