Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

More than 300 applications received for WSBO’s BEAD funding in first round
There is massive interest in the Washington State Broadband Office’s first application round for $1.2 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program funding. The first round, which closed January 31, resulted in 307 applications covering most of the project areas across the state. Awards will be made after all three funding rounds and federal approval. More hard work is ahead as the first round of applications undergo review and approval. Once those reviews are complete, future application round opening dates will be announced.
NTIA Cancels Broadband Grantee Workshops
Seven planned gatherings of federal broadband grant recipients have been cancelled, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The agency manages several ongoing broadband grant programs totalling billions of dollars, including the Middle Mile program, Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, multiple digital equity programs, and others. The workshops were intended to help grant recipients navigate the administrative process and ensure builds were successful.

Montana Advances Opportunity with Digital Equity
To close Montana’s digital divide, the Montana Broadband Office created a Digital Opportunity Plan, which addresses broadband adoption barriers in four main areas: availability, service affordability, device access, and digital skills.

4 Ways to Improve and Accelerate Broadband Expansion Nationwide
As states begin rolling out the federal program to expand high-speed broadband access, national policymakers need to keep the momentum going after three years of state-led outreach and planning with internet service providers (ISPs) and communities.

How To Free BEAD From Its Bureaucratic Shackles
The Trump administration has an opportunity to unshackle the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program from bureaucratic micromanagement and turbocharge investment of these funds in new broadband networks. Doing so will help to efficiently and quickly close the United States’s digital divide, which has lingered for decades and disproportionately impacted rural households.

Will Anybody Care About Broadband Maps?
We just spent a few years agonizing over the Federal Communications Committee broadband maps. The reasons we’ve cared is easy to understand. The FCC maps were first used to allocate Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment funding to states. States that spent a lot of time to clean up the maps seem to have gotten a better share of the BEAD funding. We’ll soon be at the end of the BEAD map challenges, and that makes me wonder if anybody will ever care about the FCC maps after this. I’m positive that when BEAD is over, the FCC and everybody else will lose interest in the broadband maps.

Improving Colorado’s BEAD Eligible Locations List
The Colorado Broadband Office (CBO) is seeking information from broadband providers who currently offer service to locations eligible for the BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment) program. This information will help the CBO ensure that BEAD funding is directed to unserved and underserved areas. This notice outlines the process for demonstrating existing service and claiming locations as served, which may preclude those locations from receiving BEAD funding. For a location to be eligible for this process, it must meet both of the following criteria:

To expand broadband, rural communities need clarity on government funding
Rural communities across America have been working flat out to expand fast, reliable internet access, but to succeed, they urgently need clarity about the resources available to move forward.
In recent weeks:
Sens Hickenlooper, Capito, Peters, Moran Reintroduce Bill to Boost Broadband Supply Chain
Sens John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Gary Peters (D-MI), and Jerry Moran (R-KS) reintroduced their bipartisan Network Equipment Transparency (NET) Act to increase broadband supply chain transparency through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make sure federal broadband programs stay on track. Previous supply chain disruptions have delayed broadband infrastructure projects.

Constraints on Satellite Broadband
In a 2024 end-of-year memo, Gary Bolton of the Fiber Broadband Association said that FBA had partnered with the consulting firm Cartesian to look at the pros and cons of Starlink in the U.S. FBA says that report shows that Starlink currently has 1.4 million customers in the U.S., and with the current satellite constellation has the capacity to serve 1.7 million customers. The implied conclusion of the report is that Starlink can’t serve everybody in rural America.