Infrastructure Funding Insights

The $42 billion BEAD program that is striving to bring high-speed affordable internet access across the country reached two critical milestones in the past 24 hours: first with the release of Louisiana's draft Final Proposal yesterday and earlier today with the announcement from Texas that every state and territory has received NTIA's approval on their Initial Proposals. Now that we have final copies of all 56 plans for BEAD, there are countless analyses to be done to beak down the different approaches each broadband office is taking. But one in particular has risen to the top for me - the low-cost option, which not only broke the model of federal broadband policy by centering affordability in a deployment program, but has been crafted differently by each state. With the help of Sarah Ali & Chloe Stemler - we've taken a deep dive into how each state approached this BEAD requirement, what changed from their draft plans from over a year ago, and what it will mean for customers served by these networks. Read more here!

$42.5 billion in BEAD funding is about to hit the market. Most fiber contractors are not ready. 50 of 56 state plans are now approved by NTIA. Louisiana has signed its award amendment and is beginning to fund subgrantees. The rest are right behind. Everyone is talking about the opportunity. Almost nobody is talking about what it takes to execute. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲. Across construction, ABC estimates 349,000 net new workers are needed this year, rising to 456,000 in 2027. One in five workers is over 55. In a recent AGC survey, 92% of firms reported difficulty hiring qualified workers. Now add the largest broadband infrastructure program in American history on top of that. Experienced splicers, OSP engineers, and project managers are already in short supply. If your model is to win BEAD work and then go find subcontractors to build it, you are already behind. The subs you are counting on are being recruited by every other contractor in the country. The companies that built and trained their own W-2 crews made a bet two years ago. That bet is about to pay off. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱. BEAD carries Build America, Buy America requirements. All fiber cable must be manufactured domestically. Manufactured products need at least 55% U.S. content. Subgrantees must maintain BABA certification letters from manufacturers, ready for federal audit. Contractors who have built their business on handshake procurement are going to struggle. Compliance is not something you figure out after you win the bid. It is a prerequisite. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗱. The program has already been restructured once. States had to revise and resubmit. That cost time. Operators need partners who can be in the field within weeks, not months. If you are still running jobs on spreadsheets, the scale of BEAD will overwhelm your operations. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: Own your labor. W-2 crews, trained internally, deployed with accountability. Own your compliance. Systems built for federal documentation before day one. Own your visibility. Real-time progress, not monthly status calls. Own your geography. BEAD is nationwide. If you cannot operate across multiple states, you are limited to whatever lands in your backyard. The capital is committed. The plans are approved. The timelines are being set right now. The question is not whether the work will get done. It is who will be capable of doing it. What are you seeing in your market? #FiberConstruction #BEAD #Broadband #Telecom #Infrastructure #OSP

Nevada's #BEAD plan is poised to transform connectivity in the state. We have a plan that has been approved and we are ready to deploy to reach every unserved Nevadan with affordable, reliable high-speed internet that utilizes the right mix of technologies: fiber, wireless, and satellite. But #BEAD is about so much more than just physical infrastructure in the ground or on poles or towers. The OSIT team comprehensively looked at the benefits Nevada's BEAD plan would have on communities beyond the fiber we build, in areas of public safety, economic growth, education, health and healthcare, employment, and bridging the digital divide. Here's what we found: * Reliable connections, safer communities: fiber enables real-time data for rapid, reliable public safety, statewide. * Expanding broadband = economic growth: Nevada’s $551 million BEAD investment could result in $2.2 billion in community impact and economic growth. * High speed internet bridges the achievement gap: high speed internet access boosts student reading and math scores as much as a $422 per-pupil spending increase. * Better broadband saves lives: over 10,000 lives could be saved annually in Nevada by ensuring all residents have access to telemonitoring and other telehealth services via high speed internet. * Connecting Nevadans to higher wages: income grows 18% faster for individuals with high speed internet, amounting to over $245 million in additional pay rural Nevada residents in a year and more than $2.45 billion over a span of 10 years. It's time to get moving on BEAD. Our providers are ready to deploy. Let us move forward without delay. I'd appreciate your feedback on our Story Map that illustrates the impacts of BEAD. https://lnkd.in/geF2EwzD

ICYMI: It’s BEAD Final Proposal season, with dozens of states slated to release plans for public comment and submit them to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the next few weeks. One of the biggest outstanding questions about the program is how recent guidance emphasizing tech neutrality will impact the distribution of locations between fiber, cable, fixed wireless, and LEO satellite connectivity. An even more fundamental question is how many locations LEO constellations can serve while maintaining high-speeds and reliability. Vernonburg Group explored this in a recent blog post, which uses broadband location data and Starlink technical specifications to estimate the percent of BEAD-eligible broadband serviceable locations (BSLs) LEO can serve in each state. Spoiler alert: State broadband leaders are making allocations that fall in the range of what we estimate LEO has the capacity to serve. The increasingly tech neutral approach is also preserving billions of dollars of non-deployment funding, which presents a unique chance for policymakers to also address other barriers to broadband availability and adoption through a #DigitalOpportunityDividend. Compare your state's Final Proposal to our estimates, available here: https://lnkd.in/d49Zm6Yn

Three key innovations in BEAD post-award enable unprecedented levels of confidence that our nation's largest-ever broadband investment goes toward genuinely solving the digital divide. They also bring a paradigm shift in broadband grant reporting & compliance sophistication that state directors, consultants, and #BEAD awardee providers must think through from the outset. 🔑 1️⃣ Areas → Locations: no more census block groups or other absurd broad-stroke geographic areas where a provider could connect a single location to "complete" up to thousands of locations. BEAD is bottom-up location-level. 🔑 2️⃣ Passings → Connections: NTIA made it possible for states to opt for the vastly superior connection established for the key performance indicator of success. No more vague "passings" (which can be defined six ways from Sunday) that represented, in the nebulous abstract, that a provider could maybe sort of think of serving an area near-ish the subscriber someday. Many leading states are already opting for the higher standard of connection established – huge W. 🔑 3️⃣ Single Event → Time Series: in prior grant programs, the area was connected, the money changed hands, and that was that. Even if the service fell of the rails years or weeks after the initial connection. In BEAD, threshold criteria like up, down and latency are checked and recorded for years after the initial connection. If a provider's network meets criteria initially, but does so within a capacity-constrained network, oversubscription could drive them into non-compliance months or years after the award. Shoutout (and thank you!) to smart folks with foresight like Scott D. Woods, Esq., Shannan R. Williams, MPP, Evan Feinman & the O.G. BEAD authors @ National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) – also to folks there currently who put a ton of good thinking into BEAD post-award guidance, thinking from first principles and learning from prior programs. You've raised the bar. BEAD has a real shot after the money changes hands in states who are ready to succeed in BEAD post-award. Grateful to be working with some pretty brilliant folks @ Ready.net who've been building an end-to-end post-award success system (called Automated Reporting & Compliance aka ARC) already proudly serving 8 state and territory offices & counting – handle the orders of magnitude great complexity required to achieve BEAD's high bar with precision and confidence.