Twenty-Eighth Quarterly Status Report to Congress Regarding BTOP

Pursuant to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA or Recovery Act) (Public Law No. 111-5), the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) provides this Quarterly Report on the status of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. This Report focuses on the Program’s activities from October 1 to December 31, 2015.

NTIA established key project indicators to track the success of the Program. SBA projects tracked the number of households subscribing to broadband, or “SBA Subscribers.” CCI projects tracked the number of “New and Upgraded Network Miles” and the number of “Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs) Connected.” Since the BTOP appropriation originally expired on September 30, 2015, NTIA retired the key project indicators. NTIA noted this in the FY 2016 budget submitted to Congress. However, on September 30, 2015, President Obama signed the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2016, which extended the availability of BTOP funding for both active grants and those in closeout until September 30, 2020. As a result, NTIA reinstated the key project indicator for the number of “New and Upgraded Network Miles.” However, due to the limited number and type of projects remaining, NTIA did not reinstate the key project indicator “CAIs Connected.” As of December 2015, NTIA’s CCI grant recipients continued to make progress toward the Program’s FY 2016 goal of deploying new or upgraded network miles. Grant recipients’ quarterly progress reports provide more granular details of these results. These reports were made public in March 2016, except for those closeout reports not yet approved by NTIA. Between October 1 and December 31, 2015, the remaining BTOP grant recipients deployed or upgraded 1,037 additional network miles. This brings the cumulative total for all BTOP recipients to more than 116,702 miles of new or upgraded network infrastructure.