Uncertainty Remains for States Ahead of NTIA BEAD Program: Panel

One item NTIA included in its NOFO that wasn’t a statutory requirement was having BEAD subgrantees submit a letter of credit, Cohen noted. The agency “not unreasonably assumed” it should have been included and “if people think this is unreasonable, they need to … come in with the evidence” to explain why, he said.

“Never has a 98-page document said so much and left so much unanswered,” said NTCA Senior Vice President-Industry Affairs Michael Romano, but “in large part it was done because … there are boundaries that needed to be set” while “recognizing the need for NTIA to work with other agencies” and states to clarify certain things. That includes defining what a low-cost option is, what’s considered high-cost or extremely high-cost, plus the buy America provision, he said: “There’s going to need to be a continuing engagement of how those things get answered.”

NTIA “at least right now” has indicated it isn’t going to grant a “blanket waiver or waiver writ large” for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s buy America provision as it did for the broadband technology opportunities program, Romano said. The agency could help providers by giving “clear goal posts about where things can move through” and when targeted waivers are possible, he said, because some are “going to be less likely to participate” if they have uncertainty. The first program in which this is “going to come into play” is NTIA’s middle-mile broadband infrastructure program, Cohen said: “NTIA is quite concerned about getting people to apply.”

Tuesday’s deadline for states to submit digital equity planning grant applications “is the kickoff for a massive amount of BEAD planning,” said Joanne Hovis, CTC Technology & Energy president and FBA board member. “Even though the NOFO’s been out for a month and a half, it's really just now that things are going to kick into gear and escalate dramatically.” States need to develop strategies that “incent companies to build in places where they make very little money or no money in return,” Hovis said.

States have an “absolutely monumental” task facing them, particularly state broadband offices, because of the “massive amount of stakeholder engagement” required, Hovis said. Companies should be engaging now with these offices on workforce development because “this is an area that’s going to require some public-private partnerships,” said Corning Manager-Federal Government Affairs Jordan Gross: It’s “certainly one of the big obstacles that stand in way” of deploying broadband projects.

NTIA’s NOFO requires that states “take very seriously the needs and requirements of local communities,” Hovis said, but it’s not realistic or practical for states to be “obligated to build a patchwork” of “strategies on a jurisdictional basis.” A local community’s level of participation during the state grant planning process “could be a make or break matter for a particular grant,” she said.

There are “a lot of questions about the broadband maps out of the FCC,” Cohen said. The initial map’s accuracy “is going to vary quite a bit,” he said, and “it’s NTIA’s call under the statute about when to go forward [and] which map to choose.” Some states have already begun mapping out locations to inform the FCC whether certain areas are unserved or underserved, said FBA Public Policy Committee co-Chair Ariane Schaffer of Google Fiber. When funding will be made available is a matter of “when will NTIA say pencils down” or if it will wait for the challenge process to go forward, Cohen said: “This is one of the great uncertainties.”