Jake Neenan

Retirements since the start of the Trump administration could impact permit reviews, said Jill Springer, the top permitting official at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The agency has been working to streamline the federal permitting process for participants in its $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. “This is a thing that I am worried about,” she said.

Participants in the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program won’t have to forego their existing federal subsidies in non-BEAD areas, the Commerce Department clarified. Rural broadband providers have expressed concerns over the newly announced plan to prevent BEAD winners from taking operational subsidies to support their deployment projects in

Sen Deb Fischer (R-NE) would prefer her state funded more fiber under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, she said on October 23. The Trump administration handed down new rules for the $42.45 billion broadband expansion program in June, ending an explicit preference for fiber and requiring another bidding round with an emphasis on lowering deployment costs.

The 49 states that have reported their tentative Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program awards are collectively $20 billion under budget, according to data posted by state broadband offices. That’s nearly half of the program’s $42.45 billion in funding. Those results are not set in stone, as the Commerce Department needs to approve preliminary results before contracts can be signed with grant winners.

With a large number of broadband builds likely to get underway next year as part of the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, the agency managing the program is preparing to process a flood of federal permits as quickly as possible. Those include historical and environmental reviews the National Telecommunications and Information has for more than a year been working to streamline.

Eight states have revised their tentative awards under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Some made minor changes and others had material reductions in locations being served or money being spent. Minnesota revealed cost thresholds the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is using to push spending down: Those from $10,000 to $20,000 per passing require written justification, those from $20,000 to $23,000 have to be negotiated down to $20,000, and those above $23,000 have to be renegotiated in three days.

The Universal Service Fund should emphasize ongoing operational support for rural internet service providers rather than one-time construction funding, several rural broadband trade groups told lawmakers. “Unfortunately, at times in the past discussion surrounding the High-Cost Fund has focused so much upon construction—the question of initial network availability—that it has become confused with grants.

Broadband trade groups participating in the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund program urged lawmakers not to fund the program through Congressional appropriations. “USF funding should not shift to an appropriations-based model. Doing so would undermine all of the programs due to the uncertainty inherent in the annual appropriations process,” the Competitive Carriers Association said in comments to a group of legislators working on modernizing the program.

States may have to rebid their most expensive areas under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. As part of the process to get their final spending plans approved by the Commerce Department, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration will compare a state’s tentatively approved projects under the $42.45 billion program to a broadband deployment cost model. States will need to negotiate downward or potentially award to another provider areas where costs are above certain thresholds, the people said.

Governor Jeff Landry (R-LA) is asking the Commerce Department to let states keep federal broadband funds they don’t end up using to secure universal connectivity, provided they spend it on certain things. Among 34 states that have reported tentative results, about $13 billion in allocated funding would be left over for those purposes.