Maine's Broadband Future

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At this beautiful year’s end, a look at developments in the BroadBand world, debated and published by “Broadband Breakfast” which I highly recommend following:

December 22, 2023 – "Pole attachments continued to be a hot button issue in 2023 as the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program got closer to breaking ground.
Broadband providers often attach fiber to wood poles owned by utility companies when expanding their infrastructure. Those poles sometimes need to be replaced to accommodate the extra equipment, either because the pole cannot bear additional weight or to comply with zoning laws.
The biggest disagreement centers on which party has to pay for those replacements. The Federal Communications Commission has authority under the Communications Act to set the terms of pole attachment deals between telecommunications providers and investor-owned utilities. That doesn’t cover all broadband deployments as some broadband providers are not registered telecom carriers and some poles are publicly owned, not to mention the 24 states with their own laws reverse-preempting the FCC on the issue, but it’s a big enough deal for telecoms and utilities to push the agency to intervene."

December 23, 2023 – "Around $3.6 billion in funds are projected to be remaining from the $14.6 billion Affordable Connectivity Program, a federal assistance initiative that has supported 1 in 6 Americans (or 22 million American households), in sustaining their internet subscription costs during 2023. These remaining funds are anticipated to be depleted by May 2024 if enrollment continues at the current rate, according to the ACP Dashboard monitoring tool developed by the advocacy group Institute for Local Self-Reliance."

Maine, with 285,694 households has 137,658 eligible for participation but only 56,352 are enrolled as of October ’23. Which results in $25,702,900 spent. TTC, per ACP dashboard.

December 25, 2023 – "The Federal Communications Commission released the initial version of its broadband map in November 202, continued to refine its broadband coverage maps in 2023. The process drew heavy scrutiny because of its importance to state-level allocations for the Biden administration’s $42.5 billion broadband expansion effort. 

In 2020, the Broadband DATA Act mandated the FCC create maps that don’t simply take as fact the inflated coverage claims of internet service providers. The first version of the map was released in November 2022, but the task of mapping every home and business in the United States and determining their broadband access is a daunting one, and the map still included many incorrectly marked locations. 

That got the year off to a rocky start, as many states were under the impression that both coverage and location data – the coordinates, addresses, and categorization of homes and businesses – could be challenged before the January deadline. 

Many states and advocacy groups asked for an extension to both the challenge and BEAD allocation deadlines, citing a lack of time and resources to gather correct information. But the FCC held firm and kept the cutoff at January 13.

The commission released a new map in May that incorporated the challenges it had received and its own continued data collection efforts. Almost 330,000 new unconnected locations were represented, and more than 3 million homes and businesses had their broadband availability information corrected. But states were still underwhelmed." The Maine broadband office said it was disappointed to see claims of advertised speeds at locations where we know it is not possible to receive that level of service.

December 26, 2023 – "The Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act’s landmark $42.5 billion broadband expansion effort was front and center in the broadband world in 2023. The Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, BEADS, got closer to breaking ground as maps were finalized, allocations were made, and states got to work drafting and refining their proposals for implementing the program. Mapping was a central concern early in the year, as states pushed the Federal Communications Commission for more time to contest its coverage data. The updated version would be used by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to determine relative need among states and territories and make final BEAD allocations. The commission ultimately held to its January 13 deadline and unveiled the second version of its map in May. Based on the data in that map, the NTIA made its BEAD allocations the next month. Texas saw the largest, at over $3.3 billion, with California taking home $1.8 billion. Missouri, Michigan, and North Carolina each received more than $1.5 billion and 14 other states were slated to get more than $1 billion to fund new broadband infrastructure."

In June, Governor Janet Mills praised the announcement by the Biden-Harris Administration that Maine will receive $272 million to expand high-speed internet access under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – the largest grant award Maine has ever received to build out broadband internet: The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced today that Maine will receive $271,977,723 over the next five years from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. “This grant funding is historic in scale, and it will be historic in impact,” said Governor Janet Mills.

Source: broadbandbreakfast.com 12 Days of BroadBand Series and Maine.gov

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It's been a while since Maine players have been told about the windfall to be expected.  A few steps further down the road, rules are finally available regarding handout and application of funds.

    The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday, May 13, 2022, released the rules governing three separate federal broadband programs, laying down the rules for more than $45 billion in spending.  The agency’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration released the Notice of Funds Opportunity for its Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as expected.  The IIJA allocated $65 billion in funding for broadband spending, with at least $45 billion allocated to the NTIA through these three programs. The $42.5 billion for BEAD is designed to address last-mile broadband connectivity. The $1 billion for middle mile spending addresses the “secondary highways” — in between data centers and individual homes — that allow our internet to work. The additional $1.5 billion is for states to engage in programs designed to address digital equity.

For full information, go https://www.internetforall.gov/sites/default/files/2022-05/Press%20Release%20-%20IFA%20Launch%20-%20Final_4.pdf

Keep watching.

--- Earlier

After more than a decade of supporting Maine’s Internet infrastructure with subsidies in form of projects like MSL Network, 3-Ring Binder, grants etc., we are still in a position where seemingly everyone with a grudge or other motivation will make dismissive comments about Maine's Internet infrastructure status. Unfortunately, facts on the ground do support most of such comments.

With the prospect of the State receiving about $129M from Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Plan for BB in addition to the $15M bond already approved by Mainers, all players in the industry are, understandably, frantically excited. Some are talking about ‘a tsunami of federal funds’. 

To avoid wasteful distribution of our tax dollars, high administrative standards need to be set by those who dispense it. Careful considerations and clear rules, oversight, vetting and contracts that spell out accountability will have to govern the selection of those on the receiving end, those experts who promise to get the now hard-to-reach and underserved communities online with a connection that is reliable and fast. Perhaps the proposed restructuring of ConnectMaine to create the Maine Connectivity Authority will be helpful in that respect.

With respect to the debated redefining of what constitutes Broadband as a marker for grant consideration, I would hope for some thoughtful flexibility should Maine’s new standard for Broadband be the 100Mbs up/down throughput. Such high standard (the FCC will most likely set the bar to that standard also) will be hard to adhere to for everyone in Maine and likely delay reaching the main goal of providing every community with a reasonably fast Internet connection. 

So far, public comments to LD 1484 suggest that most of the interested parties hoping for grant money are the same that have ‘got us where we are right now’, with quite some enthusiasm for future business.

6/24/2021