If the cloud of uncertainty suddenly hovering over federal broadband funding programs is lifted, four Tribal communities in Alaska can fully celebrate the announcement last week that state-of-the-art fiber connectivity will soon arrive at their homes on Kodiak Island just off the south coast of Alaska.

On January 16, Old Harbor Native Corporation secured a portion of $162 million in grants in the second round of funding from the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) administered by NTIA.

Old Harbor Native Corporation will undertake the project, named Project Nunapet for an Alutiiq word meaning “our lands,” in partnership with Alaska Communications.

According to a recent press announcement, a 155-mile subsea cable originating at Alaska Communications’ fiber landing station in Homer will cross the Shelikof Strait to reach Kodiak Island in Ouzinkie before circling the eastern coast of the island with stops in Narrow Cape, Old Harbor, and Akhiok. Project Nunapet will also bring fiber-to-the-home connectivity to Old Harbor, Chiniak, Akhiok, and Womens Bay.

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The two corporations hope that the infrastructure will serve as a foundation for future network expansion in the area.

With the incoming Trump administration and the ascendance of GOP leaders taking aim at key aspects of broadband expansion initiatives embedded in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, industry insiders expect the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program to likely get a major facelift in the coming months.

GOP Senate leaders have signaled they will push for BEAD to be scaled back or reconfigured.

One way they may do that is to remove the law’s preference for funding fiber network deployments and create a path for subsidizing Musk’s satellite Internet company, arguing that Starlink would be a more cost-effective solution to bring broadband to rural America.

Late last week, in fact, NTIA released its “Final Guidance for BEAD Funding of Alternative Broadband Technology.” And while the updated guidelines still considers fiber deployments as “priority broadband projects,” the agency administering the BEAD program now explicitly says that states can award “LEO Capacity Subgrants.”

Digital inclusion advocates are bracing themselves for an uncertain year ahead.

As the incoming GOP regime takes aim at key aspects of the Digital Equity Act (DEA) and the BEAD (Broadband, Equity, Access, And Deployment) program, those working to bridge the digital divide have more questions than answers just as states are preparing to dole out federal grant money yet to be awarded to grant recipients.

One major question looming over both BEAD and the Digital Equity Act is whether a new Congress can leverage the Congressional Review Act – a tool Congress can use to overturn certain federal agency actions – to undermine the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law behind the national “Internet For All” initiative.

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“The Congressional Review Act only applies to things that were adopted in the last six months. I know that there were a number of things the FCC did to make sure that they were done and would be non-reviewable under the CRA and I suspect NTIA did that as well (with BEAD),” former FCC Chief of Staff and now New Street Research policy advisor Blair Levin said during our final Building For Digital Equity (B4DE) livestream of 2024.

States are poised to receive $42.5 billion in new Broadband, Equity, Access, And Deployment (BEAD) subsidies in the new year thanks to the 2021 infrastructure bill. But a growing number of ISPs in states like Minnesota say they may not participate in this latest round of federal grants, citing bureaucracy and burdensome restrictions.

While American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grants came with significant leeway as to how grant money could be spent, BEAD grants, overseen by the National Telecommunications And Information Administration (NTIA), come with numerous requirements related to lien mandates, low-cost service obligations, and deployment technology.

Those restrictions serve a purpose in the wake of the boondoggle that was the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which resulted in a massive number of defaulting bids and unfinished projects because companies bidding on projects lacked the competency or financing to finish their awarded projects. It’s a major reason the NTIA was put in charge of BEAD.

But many Minnesota ISPs are still bristling at BEAD’s requirements, according to Brent Christensen, president and CEO of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance, an organization that represents 70 ISPs across the North Star State.

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“My members are telling me they’re not going to participate,” Christensen recently told MinnPost when asked about the $42.45 billion broadband program. “The way that BEAD is structured. I don’t know how anybody’s going to participate.”

Lafayette Utilities System’s LUS Fiber subsidiary is taking the show on the road. Louisiana’s only publicly-owned broadband provider says it’s expanding access into nearby Church Point, bringing affordable fiber access to the town of nearly 4,200 residents.

LUS Fiber was awarded a $21 million grant to expand fiber outside of Lafayette as part of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP).

“This expansion not only improves the lives of our residents but also enhances opportunities for businesses, education, and healthcare in our town,” Church Point Mayor Ryan ‘Spanky’ Meche said in a prepared statement. “LUS Fiber’s work here is a tremendous step forward for our community.”

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The expansion is part of a series of new broadband deployments that should bring more than one million feet of new fiber options to numerous new Louisiana communities, including Ville Platte, Venice, Mamou, and Basile. Church Point residents are currently able to start scheduling installations via the LUS Fiber website.

The deployments technically began earlier this year, starting with Ville Platte, which data indicates, currently has the fifth-slowest average broadband speeds in the continental U.S.

Like most of America, much of Louisiana is dominated by a handful of regional telecom monopolies that see little competitive incentive to compete on speeds, coverage, prices, or quality customer service.

As the federal government makes unprecedented investments to expand high-speed access to the Internet, unbeknownst to most outside the broadband industry is that nearly a third of the states in the U.S. have preemption laws in place that either prevent or restrict local municipalities from building and operating publicly-owned, locally-controlled networks.

Currently, there are 16 states across the U.S. (listed below) with these monopoly-protecting, anti-competition preemption laws in place.

These states maintain these laws, despite the fact that wherever municipal broadband networks or other forms of community-owned networks operate, the service they deliver residents and businesses almost always offers faster connection speeds, more reliable service, and lower prices.

In numerous cases, municipal broadband networks are able to provide low-cost or free service to low-income households even in the absence of the now expired federal Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). And for several years in a row now, municipal networks consistently rank higher in terms of consumer satisfaction and performance in comparison to the big monopoly Internet service providers, as PCMag and Consumer Reports have documented time and time again.

Nevertheless, these preemption laws remain in 16 states, enacted at the behest of Big Cable and Telecom lobbyists, many of whom have ghost written the statutes, in an effort to protect ISP monopolies from competition.

The Infrastructure Law Was Supposed to Move the Preemption Needle But …