By Kelly Hill
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is tasked with turning US$65 billion in funding into programmes that will make broadband services available and affordable to all Americans, plans to hold a series of public “listening sessions” to gather stakeholder input on exactly how to do that.
The sessions will focus on gathering input on how to develop and implement five new broadband grant programs that were funded as part of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act:
–The Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Programme, which allocates US$42.45 billion for states and territories for broadband deployment, mapping and adoption projects. Each state, D.C., and P.R. will receive an initial allocation of US$100 million, and US$100 million will be divided equally among the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. The rest of the funds will be distributed based on the number of high-cost and unserved locations in the state of territory, with “unserved” considered to be those with no service or service slower than 25/3 Mbps. States and territories must submit a five-year action plan on how they will use the funds.
-The Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Programme, which puts US$1 billion in play to for “construction, improvement or acquisition” of middle-mile infrastructure that connects local or regional networks to the rest of the internet. Parties eligible to apply for these funds include not just government or Tribal entities, but telecom and technology companies, utilities, non-profits, regional planning councils and economic development authorities.
-The Digital Equity Act programmes, which include the State Digital Equity Planning Grant Programme (US$60 million grant program to assist states and territories in developing plans focused on digital equity), the State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Programme (US$1.44 billion in grants to states and territories over five years to support implementation of digital equity plans) and the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Programmme (US$1.25 billion in competitive grants over five years, for projects that implement digital equity and for which non-profits, community institutions, educitonal agencies and workforce development entities are also eligible).
