Tenn. Braces for BEAD as States See Broadband Funding Surge
State broadband offices are adapting to much larger sums of cash than they had in years past, due to recent federal laws, said a Tennessee official at a virtual Broadband Breakfast event Wednesday. Building broadband “to and through” anchor institutions can sometimes be the best option to reach rural communities, said New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI) and the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition in a Wednesday report.
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Tennessee’s broadband program “has grown astronomically,” said Taylre Beaty, Tennessee Department of Community and Economic Affairs broadband program director. Since 2017, the state has spent about $120 million in state and federal Cares Act funding to reach about 40,000 households, she said. Later this month or in early September, Tennessee will announce $450 million in American Rescue Plan Act grants for about 75 projects to reach 130,000-140,000 households, she said. The largest awardee will get about $20 million, which is more money than the state had to spend in each of the state program’s first two years, she said. It’s a "transition that all states are going through,” Beaty said, noting some didn’t even have broadband offices before.
States are required to do more planning for the broadband, equity, access and deployment program (BEAD) under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), said Beaty. Tennessee recently submitted its “plan for the plan,” how the state will budget $5 million to create a five-year BEAD plan, she said. NTIA said all states met Monday’s deadline (see 2208170031). States' participation in challenging federal maps will be important, said Beaty, noting states are more engaged now than they were in the past. Tennessee now has its own map and will soon release an update, likely in October, said the official: The state will challenge federal maps if it finds discrepancies.
“We plan to be as technology neutral as we can within [BEAD] guidelines,” said Beaty, noting that seeking symmetrical speeds can weed out certain technologies. "If a provider type can't ... reach the speed threshold" of NTIA's guidelines, they could still "play a role in the adoption programs and the interim solutions" and work with communities and libraries, she said.
SHLB and OTI’s report said deploying “wireless broadband from an anchor institution to the community may … be not only economically rational but in some cases the most cost-effective and financially sustainable option.” Telecom Advisory Services President Raul Katz wrote, “The indefinite purchase of monthly service through a commercial ISP is less cost-effective and financially sustainable than the other deployment options where they are feasible.”
Deployment costs using citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) band spectrum “or community Wi-Fi can often be one-fifth or sometimes even one-tenth the cost of purchasing monthly wireless service from a traditional wireless provider,” said SHLB Coalition Executive Director John Windhausen on a webinar Wednesday. That’s important because the FCC’s $7 billion emergency connectivity fund is temporary, said OTI Wireless Future Project Director Michael Calabrese. ECF connected about 7 million students, but unless Congress makes it permanent, “there’s no sustainable solution in sight to close the homework gap,” he said. “It is reopening.”
A school district in Council Bluffs, Iowa, is using a Wi-Fi Network of 700-750 access points on school rooftops and streetlights and poles to provide free wireless throughout the city, said Council Bluffs Community School District Chief Technology Officer John Stile. It gets 50,000 unique connections monthly, with 3,589 different students logging on and transmitting 5.63 terabytes of data last week, he said. The district began deploying the network in 2014. "When the pandemic hit, it was a non-event for us because we were already prepared,” said Stile.
Another school district in Fresno, California, deployed a private LTE network to serve its 75,000 students, said Philip Neufeld, Fresno Unified School District executive officer-technology services. The district had found commercial hotspots didn't work well enough for students, especially in areas of poverty that lacked sufficient coverage, he said. The project chose LTE over Wi-Fi because it couldn’t access city light poles, and tapped CBRS spectrum because the Educational Broadband Service (EBS) band was leased to T-Mobile, he said. Even if fiber is coming, people won’t be able to use it for another four to six years, said Neufeld: Until then, the district’s network will be a critical "bridge."