*In partnership with Broadband Breakfast, we occasionally republish each other's content. The following story by Broadband Breakfast Reporter Taormina Falsitta was originally published here.

Experts expressed concern that federal support for municipal broadband is limited, prompting uncertainty about future funding and operational sustainability at a Fiber for Breakfast event Wednesday.

Tyler Cooper, editor-in-chief of Broadband Now, a website that provides resources for internet providers, said that Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants are less promising for municipal broadband deployments despite initial promises.

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"We want to make sure BEAD funding areas have a vibrant competitive marketplace for decades to come," said Cooper. “It is here that I think municipal providers stand to make the most impact over time.”

“Municipal providers have been a lifeline to residents in these areas. They spur competition and innovation, they build future-proof technologies, primarily fiber, and they're more in tune in general with the needs of their communities than other providers.”

However, Cooper expressed concern that BEAD rules and requirements may not favor municipal networks, potentially favoring larger ISPs. BEAD has “become a much less promising vehicle for deploying municipal broadband nationwide.”

[See our recent story here on how local officials are seeing this play out in Massachusetts]  

The towns of Somerville and Washington Maine have kickstarted their long-percolating efforts to deliver fiber broadband to both long-neglected rural municipalities.

In an update posted to both towns' respective websites, officials say that the municipalities’ partner, Axiom Technologies, has begun construction on a dual-town fiber deployment funded by state and federal grants.

Somerville (est. pop. 600) and Washington (est. pop. 1,590) will be offering many local residents fiber access for the first time. Both of the deployments were made possible by a 2022 Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP) grant from the NTIA, coordinated via the ConnectMaine Authority (now part of the Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA)).

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Established in 2021, the MCA is a quasi-governmental agency funded through a combination of federal and state resources, and tasked with ensuring the even, equitable deployment of broadband access to all corners of the Pine Tree State. They’ll be playing a central role in the disbursement of the state’s $272 million upcoming BEAD subsidy awards.

Fiber Finally  

According to a Washington, Maine FAQ, the total cost of network deployment for the town was $2,913,919 ($2,622,527 from the NTIA, $291,392 from the state). The Somerville FAQ indicates that their segment of the network construction was $1,601,901 ($1,441,711 from the NTIA, $160,190 from the state).

In March, Charter Communications tried (and failed) to include a poison bill in New York State’s budget bill that would have hamstrung community broadband. In stark contrast, a New York legislator this month introduced new legislation he says would make it easier than ever for New York state municipal broadband projects to thrive.

State Senator Jeremy Cooney of Rochester has introduced the Broadband Deployment Assistance Act of 2024 (S9134), which would streamline the permitting process for municipal broadband projects by "amending the general municipal law, in relation to requiring substantially similar permits for broadband deployment to be processed together at the same time and on an expedited basis."

“With a quicker timeline and more efficient process for local governments, we can create affordable options for New Yorkers that empower them to take control of their digital destiny,” Cooney wrote in an editorial published at Syracuse.com.

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Cooney says he was motivated by a lack of broadband competition in New York State. New York is dominated by Charter Communications, which was almost kicked out of the state in 2019 for poor service and  misleading regulators about broadband deployment conditions affixed to its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable.

Blueprints for BEAD is a series of short notes and analysis on nuances of BEAD that might otherwise get lost in the volume of material published on this federal funding program. Click the “Blueprints for BEAD” tag at the bottom of this story for other posts.
 

By mid June, we will have blown past the halfway mark in the BEAD challenge process - with more than thirty states having completed their “challenge windows” and another handful set to close imminently. But the “challenge window” is only part of the overall challenge process, and there are reasons for communities to stay engaged with the process even after that window closes. Communities - don’t sleep on the rebuttal window!

Where We Sit Today

Each state must conduct a challenge process prior to opening up BEAD grants to verify that the data on the National Broadband Map is accurate. That process will have three stages: the challenge window, the rebuttal window, and the determination window. During the challenge window, eligible challengers (local and Tribal governments, nonprofits, and ISPs) can present evidence that locations are incorrectly categorized as served, underserved, or served. According to the NTIA’s Challenge Process Policy Notice, those same eligible entities can participate in the rebuttal window, where they supply evidence refuting a challenge that was made by someone else. After both of these periods are over, the state weighs all of the evidence and makes a final determination (determination window). 

Why might this rebuttal period be important for communities? In short, not all challenges are created equally. While we might primarily think of challenges that make the map more accurate, some challenges could, in fact, make the map less accurate. Some ISPs might make questionable challenges about the level of service they can or will provide.

Telecom monopolies have hoovered up the lion’s share of $214 million recently doled out by the Pennsylvania state Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP), with cooperatives, smaller ISPs, and community-owned networks left largely out in the cold.

It’s not a surprising move for a state long considered politically hostile to community-owned and operated broadband networks, though industry experts say this latest round of awards was particularly egregious when it comes to dodgy politics and its total lack of any real transparency.

According to an announcement by the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (PBDA), this $204 million in Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP) grant awards will help fund 53 projects in 42 counties across Pennsylvania, connecting 40,000 homes and businesses, bringing high-speed Internet to over 100,000 Pennsylvanians.

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The awards were funded with the state’s Capital Projects Fund allocation. After matching funds by winning bidders are included, the total broadband investment is expected to exceed $407 million. A complete breakdown of all grant award winners can be found here.

Verizon was the biggest grant award winner, nabbing $78.3 million. Other big grant award winners were Comcast ($61.7 million), Windstream ($12 million) Frontier ($3.5 million) and Brightspeed ($782,000). A few small private ISPs also won awards including Adams Cable ($387,969) Upward Broadband ($1,476,288) and Alleghenies Broadband ($1,809,524).