States Should Highlight Fiber, Competition in Capital Projects Fund Plans: Official

The Treasury Department is now accepting states’ grant and program plans for its $10 billion Capital Projects Fund, said Joseph Wender, the program’s director, during an Incompas webinar Wednesday (see 2203310037). “We are officially open for business,” Wender said, adding his office is in the process of approving funding applications and expects initial awards to be announced “in months.”

State broadband offices should consider deploying 100 Mbps symmetrical speeds where practical, with fiber networks, and affordability in their plans, Wender said. “We have put our thumb on the scale,” he said. Wender said he expects the “vast majority” of states to set these goals and acknowledged “other technologies can play a role.” Incompas CEO Chip Pickering agreed states should use “fiber as our foundation” to ensure “future-proof networks.”

Wender encouraged states to submit their plans well before the Sept. 24 deadline because they can “get to work” as soon as their application is approved. About 10 states have applied. It remains unclear how prepared the remaining states are to submit applications, he said, encouraging states to review the program’s rules before applying. Wender noted his office has designated points of contact for each state to navigate the program’s rules.

“This is a historic moment in which it’s going to take [providers’] advocacy to get us where we’re going,” Wender said on the need for collaboration among states and industry. Pickering encouraged Incompas members to “take ownership” of their part in the program and “make the case for competition” in their states.

States “should want to stretch their dollars as far as they can” to lower the cost of deploying fiber and encourage competition among a wide range of providers, Wender said. The program “was designed to give a lot of flexibility to states,” he said, and the plans don’t need to include details about specific projects. Wender said one concern is that such flexibility could lead to “less than optimal outcomes or efforts” in certain states’ broadband plans.

There’s a “real commitment” among federal agencies to “make sure that we’re coordinating our broadband policy,” Wender said, saying his department regularly meets with NTIA and the FCC. There’s “an awareness that we’re not going to get a second chance” at additional broadband funding “in the foreseeable future,” he said.

Funding has already been allocated to states, territories, and tribal governments, Wender said, and each state knows how much it was allocated (see 2203310037). About $495 million is available now for states to cover administrative costs and prepare their grant and program plans.

The department is considering the kind of data that needs to be collected from the program and how it can be consistent with other efforts as the FCC develops its new broadband maps, Wender said. Providers "have a pretty good sense of their coverage area” and should be able to provide latitudinal and longitudinal data, he said. It “behooves competitors” to know where the gaps are in the eventual maps, Wender said.