Infrastructure

Broadband is critical to strengthening our economy, improving educational opportunities, and enhancing the delivery of health care, public safety and other government services. “If you can’t play in this space in the 21st century, you discover that your opportunities are limited,” said Governor Charlie Baker (R-MA).

The deadline for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)'s middle-mile grant program just closed, and the NTIA said that it received 235 applications totaling $5.5 billion in grant requests for a $1 billion grant program. I was surprised when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) legislation allocated only $1 billion to middle-mile fiber. That works out to only $20 million per state. It will be interesting to see how the NTIA spreads the funding.

For rural operators looking to take advantage of edge computing, partnerships will be key to their success. Taking a “build it and they will come” approach may not be the right strategy. Instead, the opportunity could be in partnering with “hyperscalers” (massive companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon) that are looking to deploy edge computing equipment in rural America but don’t have the local resources/ capabilities to do so. Key information from this report includes: 

Vermont stakeholders have collaborated on an application for $114 million in funding through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) middle mile grant program. If awarded, the funding would represent over 10% of the approximately $1 billion allotted to the NTIA program, which has proven to be a highly competitive one. The Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB) spearheaded the application. The request would cover some of the costs of the proposed 1,663-mile fiber network.

Wireless internet service providers (WISPs) have hit a breaking point. With fiber players gaining steam and both public and private funding fueling overbuilds of their territories, the heads of several fixed wireless providers say that they don’t expect WISPs to survive beyond the next five to 10 years—at least not in their current form. WISP executives said they are up against rising construction costs, staffing struggles, spectrum questions, and the impending retirement of long-time CEOs.

One of the most interesting aspects of serving broadband from low-orbit satellites is that it brings issues related to space into the broadband discussion. There are two recent events that highlight our new focus on low-earth orbit satellites. The first is a piece of legislation introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and Roger Wicker (R-MS). The legislation is called the Orbital Sustainability (ORBITS) Act.

Verizon announced that select 5G Home and LTE Home Internet services are available for free to qualifying households through the new Verizon Forward Program.

Some 8,000 households and businesses in Wisconsin will be connected to high-speed internet access due to the American Rescue Plan Act’s Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund. In his January 2021 State of the State Address, Governor Tony Evers (D-WI) declared 2021 “the year of broadband access" in Wisconsin.

The US Department of the Treasury approved broadband projects in an additional group of three states under the American Rescue Plan’s (ARPA) Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund (CPF): Massachusetts, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Together, these states will use their funding to connect more than 91,000 homes and businesses to affordable, high-speed internet. A key priority of the CPF program is to make funding available for reliable, affordable broadband infrastructure.

AT&T has made a point of pursuing public-private partnership agreements in recent months, striking deals in Indiana, Kentucky, and Texas. AT&T President of Broadband Access and Deployment Jeff Luong cites the company's ahead-of-schedule project in Indiana as a template for what might be achieved through future projects funded by the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. The executive noted that in addition to the publicly announced partnerships in Indiana, Kentucky, and Texas, AT&T has won a handful of other deals it hasn’t disclosed.