Nebraska Examiner

We urge the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to clarify that precision agriculture connectivity constitutes an eligible use of remaining Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment non-deployment funds. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law defines eligible locations and permissible activities in ways that encompass broadband needed for agricultural operations on farmland and ranchland.

On Sept. 3, the Nebraska Broadband Office, or NBO, released its draft final proposal for how to spend $405 million in federal broadband funds. Advocates for rural broadband like myself fought hard for that money, challenging providers’ overstated coverage and identifying tens of thousands of missing locations. The federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, or BEAD, promised to fix rural broadband in Nebraska once and for all. Instead, NBO fumbled. Out of $405 million, the plan spends barely $43 million and connects fewer than 1,300 locations to fiber broadband.

Advocates for rural Nebraska and telecommunications companies are expressing disappointment and some condemnation over the decision to propose spending only $43.8 million of the $405 million in federal money awarded to the state to expand high-speed internet “for all.” These “provisional” awards by the Nebraska Broadband Office that Gov Jim Pillen (R-NE) created raise the prospect that $350 million in unspent funds awarded to the state under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program could be returned to Washington (DC), and not spent in the state.

County officials and advocates for rural development cried foul over recent changes in a federal initiative to expand access to high-speed internet, saying they will force thousands in rural Nebraska to settle for second-rate broadband. County Commissioner Misty Ahmic of Milford was part of a county task force dedicated to bringing high-speed internet to so-called “dark territories” in the county.