BEAD Bidders Should Consider Scoring Trade-Offs: WBBA

While fiber-to-the-home costs per home passed and connection costs are generally high in North America, the lack of commercial investment in FTTH broadband infrastructure is "somewhat surprising," the World Broadband Association said Tuesday in its North America broadband investment guidebook. It said the viability of investment in North American broadband infrastructure could improve if operators enhanced the attractiveness of their retail offering. In addition, the importance of having a trained fiber workforce to reduce deployment costs and speed up time to market needs attention, the guidebook said. It noted the high demand for government subsidization of retail broadband plans and advised that broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program bidders should carefully consider trade-offs in the scoring criteria. Moreover, harmonization between government programs for broadband supply and demand is needed, as there's no value in subsidizing good-quality broadband infrastructure if subscription take-up is low.