Starting November 1, broadband industry leaders, especially providers, are breathing a collective sigh of relief as NTIA officials have provided a <a href="https://broadbandbreakfast.com/2023/11/ntia-will-allow-alternatives-to-letter-of-credit-for-bead-funding-in-new-guidance/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">programmatic waiver</a> providing states and territories with more options to ensure the financial reliability of BEAD grants.BEAD grant recipients, under previous rules, were required to produce a <a href="http://Letter of Credit" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Letter of Credit</a> for a 25% of the total award amount from an FDIC-insured bank with a Weiss rating of B- or better, unless specified by BEAD rules. This required putting substantial sums of cash as collateral which often prevented smaller and minority-owned providers from participating.NTIA’s waiver provides numerous changes to the Letter of Credit requirements that aim to enhance access to funding, including allowing states to utilize a <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/performance-bonds-for-bead-grants" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">performance bond</a> for the full award amount.Performance bonds are a new chapter for the broadband sector with their full adoption pending the results of a national working group led by the <a href="https://www.nasbp.org/home" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National Association of Surety Bond Producers,</a> or NASPB, and <a href="https://surety.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Surety and Fidelity Association of America</a>, or SFAA.The working group is expected to release its results in either the first or second quarter of 2024.<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/bbm-public-bucket/Lo_C_Performance_Bond_4d7bb4ad13/Lo_C_Performance_Bond_4d7bb4ad13.svg" alt="Performance Bonds"></div><h2>What are performance bonds?</h2>Performance bonds are surety bonds issued by an insurance company or bank that guarantees successful completion of a project. Performance bonds are most commonly used in the construction industry, legal sectors in the form of appeal bonds and some licensed occupations.Performance bonds allow the principal, such as an <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/isp-or-provider" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">internet service provider</a>, &nbsp;to be protected for the full cost of the project by the surety, or financial institution, that is providing the performance bond. The obligee, or entity requesting the work such as a municipality or state broadband office, in return, can file a claim against the bond to recover losses from uncompleted work.<h2>What’s the application process for a performance bond?</h2>Providers should first be sure to build relationships with surety providers prior to the application period. Read: This is not the time to procrastinate.Your first step should be to ask your company’s insurance provider to connect you with a surety agent that is familiar with the broadband sector. Having an agent with sector knowledge allows for productive conversations, accurate assessment of the application and its risks and, ultimately, the most beneficial terms for everyone involved.Be sure to take advantage of online resources such as <a href="https://broadband.money/start-broadband-grant-application" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Broadband.money</a> and <a href="https://www.beadbonding.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">BEADbonding.com</a> which contain valuable resources on establishing BEAD-compliant contracts and performance bonds.Applicants will be expected during the submission process to provide business credit information and financial documents for an understanding of the applicant’s financial position. Sureties will also want information about the applicant’s progress on related projects, project schedule and work capacity.Some sureties might expect a pledge of collateral or cash funds depending on the size of the bond and the company’s track record with past projects.Surety agents will guide applicants through the entire underwriting process with bond costs ranging from 2%-6% of the total project cost or, in the case of BEAD, award amount.Approval timelines vary on a case-by-case basis. Smaller bonds, usually under $1 million, can be approved in a matter of hours, especially if the applicant has strong credit and is in a strong financial position. Larger bonds of up to $10 million can take up to two weeks.<h2>How are performance bonds being used in broadband?</h2>The national working group led by the NASPB and SFAA are working with the NTIA, states, ISPs, &nbsp;and other government entities to tailor guidelines for how performance bonds can be utilized with the BEAD program.Among the biggest challenges are reaching a middle ground between what language is acceptable to the NTIA for bonding purposes but also ensuring that bonds are able to still provide value to both applicants and grantors.<h2>What comes next?</h2>Grantors must become aware of their responsibilities surrounding performance bonds, such as awareness of project progress and ensuring that projects are completed in a timely manner. Failure to fill these responsibilities could potentially result in a bond being unable to be called upon.Applicants must become familiar with performance bonds and take preliminary steps to take advantage of them as soon as they are available. This includes being aware of their benefits, such as greater access to capital and diversity among applicants, and also a stronger assurance that the work will be done.Applicants should be sure to tap into numerous resources available from the broadband community, such as <a href="https://broadband.money/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Broadband.money</a> and <a href="http://broadband.io" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Broadband.io</a>.

A crash course on performance bonds for America’s leading broadband pros

Here’s what you need to know about performance bonds today.

Everything broadband pros need to know about performance bonds

Everything you need to know today about performance bonds

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Performance bonds 101 for Broadband Pros

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What Every Broadband Pro Should Know about Performance Bonds

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The surprise wasn’t what President Biden said about broadband in the East Room of the White House – it was that he said it in the East Room of the White House.As far as federal programs go, $42.5 billion isn’t nothing. But it isn’t a lot of money, either. I think the takeaway of yesterday’s announcement is that Biden (and Vice President Kamala Harris) want to be associated with improving Americans’ broadband.&nbsp;<h2>Parallels with rural electrification of three generations ago</h2>I was struck by the repeated mentions of the connection between the bipartisan infrastructure law and the 1936 Rural Electrification Act passed during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt.The 1936 law intended to bring electricity to nearly every home and farm in America, the administration noted.&nbsp;“High-speed internet is the new electricity,” the White House noted in the first page of its briefing guide.&nbsp;“Today, roughly 8.5 million locations across America aren’t connected to the internet. The Biden-Harris Administration is going to close that gap. As a result of once-in-a-generation funding in the President’s Investing in America agenda… to bring affordable, reliable, high-speed internet to everyone in America.”&nbsp;<h2>States learn that they win some and lose some</h2><a href="https://ready.net/state-broadband-office-resources/list-ntia-bead-broadband-grant-allocations" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">States are still digesting their numbers released yesterday.</a>Some states, like Virginia, were pleased with their numbers – $1.48 billion. Other states, like Kansas, were disappointed – $451 million. The next step will be to compare the numbers released yesterday with the various industry and analyst projections that have been made.&nbsp;Critically important will be understanding why&nbsp;each state received their particular award – and the tools that state broadband offices need to manage the state challenge processes.&nbsp;<h2>Linkages to other aspects of the Biden administration’s Investing in America agenda</h2>Another thing I heard while I listened to Biden’s statements yesterday was how the president is doubling down on “Buy America” rules.In its briefing prior to the announcement, the administration highlighted how “President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is driving a manufacturing boom – in part because of provisions in the historic legislation passed by President Biden that requires made-in-America materials.”For example, they highlighted a recent announcement in North Carolina by fiber optic cable manufacturers Corning and CommScope announced $500 million and $47 million expansions of facilities earlier in the year.There are some thorny issues to address here, too. But as the broadband industry welcomes the implementation of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, in needs to be conscious of sorting through these challenges, too.

Parallels with rural electrification, states digest their awards, and learning to live with Buy America rules.

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Some early takeaways on the Biden administration’s BEAD allocation announcement

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No matter where you go grocery shopping in the United States nowadays, whether it’s the biggest of chain supermarkets to the smallest of mom n’ pop shops, you can count on one thing: nearly all the packaged food that you can buy will have clearly displayed, black and white nutrition labels printed on it listing the calories, total fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, and other ingredients.&nbsp;These standardized nutrition labels were actually created relatively recently as a&nbsp;<a href="https://he.utexas.edu/ntr-news-list/food-labels-history">result of the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act</a>, designed to help consumers make fully informed shopping decisions, and to be able to accurately compare different food products to one another. Nearly all producers of packaged food in the U.S. must comply with these requirements. Now, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to apply a similar kind of labeling to a very different product class: Broadband internet plans.&nbsp;The FCC has been working over the last six years on developing a plan for what precise information the new “Broadband Nutrition Labels” would include. There was a vigorous commentary between advocacy groups on how the agency could best help consumers, and how, when, and where providers would be required to display such labels.&nbsp;The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed by Congress in 2021 further spurred the process, as it directed the FCC to require standardized broadband plan labels from providers. On November 14, 2022, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-requires-broadband-providers-display-labels-help-consumers">FCC voted to enact them through a new order</a>. There will be some additional modifications pending further commentary, but the basic framework has been established.&nbsp;But high-speed internet plans are very different than food. What exactly is required in the FCC’s new Broadband Nutrition Labels? Which providers must comply? What information must providers display, when, where, and what are the possible penalties for failing to comply? Read on to learn more.In the meantime, Ready.net is working towards helping providers follow the FCC's broadband nutrition facts label requirement. Providers will be able to incorporate the relevant subscriber plan information in a broadband nutrition facts label in our relevant products in the near future.&nbsp;Where did the FCC post the new Broadband Nutrition Label requirements?The full 87-page-long order document detailing all of the new standardized requirements, as well as various rationale and refutations toward organizations challenging the FCC during the public hearings and comment period held over the course of 2022, can be found on various pages on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-requires-broadband-providers-display-labels-help-consumers">the FCC website</a>.&nbsp;The full order is&nbsp;<a href="https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-22-86A1.pdf">here</a>.The hearings are available&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels">here</a>.&nbsp;Who must comply with the Broadband Nutrition Label order?All providers offering fixed and mobile broadband plans for individual consumers and households — that is, any company offering broadband service delivered to a single location, like cable internet installed at your home or apartment from Spectrum or Optimum or smaller local providers, and mobile device plans for phones and tablets, like the 5G service on your smartphone from carrier companies such as AT&amp;T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Cricket Wireless, etc.&nbsp;The notable exception to these requirements is for&nbsp;enterprise service plans: broadband access, fixed or mobile, that is only available to enterprise customers, such as businesses, nonprofits, schools, healthcare facilities, and other organizations. The FCC, for now, says that enterprise internet plans&nbsp;do not&nbsp;have to follow the Broadband Nutrition Labels.&nbsp;So, to review: for example, Verizon FiOS internet plans offered for households&nbsp;must comply with the new Broadband Nutrition Labels, while Verizon FiOS enterprise internet for organizations would&nbsp;not need to comply with them.&nbsp;Importantly,&nbsp;the order applies only to plans currently being offered to new customers and any new plans that may be offered by providers going forward. Older plans that have been discontinued, or current plans that are&nbsp;no longer available to purchase by new customers, do not need to have Broadband Nutrition Labels created for them.&nbsp;&nbsp;Finally, all Broadband Nutrition Labels must be retained by providers for a minimum of two years, according to the FCC.When do providers have to begin posting the Broadband Nutrition Labels?The FCC voted to adopt the new requirements in November 2022 and published a notice of its rulemaking in the <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/12/16/2022-26853/empowering-broadband-consumers-through-transparency">Federal Register on December 16, 2022</a>, with the rule going into effect on January 17, 2023. Nonetheless, the agency is still leaving the door open for replies to its own replies to previous comments until <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/12/16/2022-26853/empowering-broadband-consumers-through-transparency">next week Tuesday, February 14, 2023</a>.&nbsp;Large providers are required to publish their labels within six months. Smaller providers are required to publish their labels within one year ('smaller' providers are defined as those with 100,000 or fewer subscriber lines).&nbsp;Where must providers post their Broadband Nutrition Labels?&nbsp;&nbsp;According to the FCC, providers must display the nutrition labels for any and all available plans on “both ISP websites and any other channels through which their service is sold, including ISP-owned retail locations, third-party owned retail locations, and over the phone.”While the FCC leaves it up to the providers to choose the exact location on their website or physical media to display the Broadband Nutrition Labels, and how large or small the font size is, “providers should ensure that the labels are prominently displayed on any device on which the consumer accesses and views the labels, including mobile devices.”&nbsp;Notably, the FCC says that as soon as a customer provides their service address to any provider or their representatives, the provider should then display the label of any associated plans that are offered at that location.&nbsp;What information must the labels include?&nbsp;Perhaps the most critical piece of information for providers to consider is the actual content of the labels. The labels follow a fairly simple and similar looking format as the FDA food nutrition labels described above, but with different categories, including (in the following order):<ul><li>The provider company’s name at the top</li><li>The name of the particular plan being offered (whether it is a speed name or a brand name like TurboNet, for example)</li><li>Whether it’s a fixed or mobile internet plan</li><li>The plan’s price — including whether it is an introductory rate, and if so, how long that price lasts and what the successive rate will be, and whether it requires a contract, and for what length of time</li><li>Additional charges, including one-time installation fees or equipment fees, early termination fees, and taxes applied</li><li>Discounts offered by bundling the plan with other services (such as TV or phone)</li><li>Whether or not it qualifies as part of the separate Affordable Connectivity Program</li><li>The typical download and upload speeds in megabits-per-second, as well as latency in milliseconds (how long it&nbsp;<a href="https://frontier.com/resources/what-is-network-latency">takes data to transfer</a>)&nbsp;</li><li>The limits on how much data the plan allows the customer to transfer/access every month, and any overage charges (in gigabytes and price-per-gigabytes, respectively)&nbsp;</li><li>Links to network management and privacy policies</li><li>Customer support phone number or website</li><li>A link to the fcc.gov/consumer site</li><li>The plan’s unique identification number</li></ul>What do the new Broadband Nutrition Labels look like?The FCC requires that providers all follow the same format when posting their labels, including the same fields, colors (black and white), and arrangement of information. This is to ensure consumers can accurately compare plans side-by-side. The FCC included the following example format — though note that the red text is simply to show where providers must input their own information in black. Importantly: the order states that the information must be “machine readable,” that is, scannable by a computer program using optical character recognition (OCR), presumably to allow for other apps and software programs to help consumers compare plans.&nbsp;<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/bbm-public-bucket/Broadband_Nutrition_Label_1_cead8c9e23/Broadband_Nutrition_Label_1_cead8c9e23.png"></figure>What are the penalties for providers that fail to comply with the Broadband Nutrition Label order?&nbsp;The FCC does not specify what fines, fees or penalties providers that do not comply with the Broadband Nutrition Label order will face, instead deferring to its existing authority and enforcement mechanisms.As the order states, “we find that our existing enforcement mechanisms should enable us to enforce our new label requirements, including the accuracy of the label’s content and the sufficiency of its format and display location. We thus will use the identical procedures to enforce the broadband label requirements adopted here.”But what are those “existing enforcement mechanisms” and how would they apply to providers that are accused of running afoul of the labels, either in completeness, accessibility, or accuracy?&nbsp;The FCC has its own Enforcement Bureau that conducts investigations and may issue subpoenas to organizations and individuals accused of violating its requirements. It also has an Investigations &amp; Hearings Division responsible for taking “enforcement actions” against violators, including “forfeiture orders,” essentially a fine, the value of which is “case specific.”In footnotes of the Broadband Nutrition Label order, the FCC notes that penalties for violators should be “sufficient to deter noncompliance,” yet not so minimal “as to constitute a cost of doing business for providers,” suggesting they could be high.&nbsp;How will the FCC evaluate internet service plans to ensure they are complying with the information listed on the labels?The FCC doesn’t state whether it will on its own run any speed or latency tests on providers to ensure they are complying with the information provided in their labels.&nbsp;However, the order states that the agency will accept and investigate individual complaints from consumers “as vigorously as we do other informal complaints.” Consumers can file complaints using the&nbsp;<a href="https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us.">FCC’s existing online forms here</a>.&nbsp;Other enforcement actionsThere’s a possibility that the labels make providers subject to enforcement actions from other government entities, however.&nbsp;For example, state attorneys general across the country have said that they’re investigating providers who have engaged in a number of practices, such as enforcing data caps.Also, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has launched an investigation into Optimum Altice for allegedly misrepresenting its internet services.“The overwhelming number of complaints relate to consumers who have not received advertised speeds for Optimum 300 megabits per second and Optimum 400 megabits per second, cable internet plans they paid for,” Tong&nbsp;<a href="https://ctmirror.org/2022/11/22/ct-optimum-altice-internet-service-investigation/">said</a>.

Providers need to inform new customers what they're receiving for their subscriptions. Here are the facts.

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What the FCC's New Broadband ‘Nutrition Labels’ Require

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Virginia’s Office of Broadband is housed in the Commonwealth’s Department of Housing and Community Development. Dr. Tamarah Holmes, in addition to leading the Office of Broadband, is the program manager for the Virginia Appalachian Regional Commission. 

Virginia’s Office of Broadband is housed in the commonwealth’s Department of Housing and Community Development. Dr. Tamarah Holmes, in addition to leading the Office of Broadband, is the program manager for the Virginia Appalachian Regional Commission. 

How Dr. Tamarah Holmes plans on connecting the Commonwealth to broadband

Virginia’s broadband director aims to bring broadband to every Virginian

No Location Left Behind: Dr. Tamarah Holmes’ promise to Virginians

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Discover the compelling efforts led by Sally Doty and the Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi (BEAM) team as they strive to bridge the digital divide in one of the most underserved states. With a focus on transparency and engagement, BEAM has conducted over 40 meetings, partnering with organizations like Ready to ensure a seamless challenge process for providers. Uncover the challenges faced by Mississippi, where almost 70 percent of 1,347,000 broadband service locations are either unserved or underserved. Join us in following the journey of BEAM as they tirelessly work towards making broadband a reality for all Mississippians, showcased through the lens of Leonard and Ben, the Broadband Bros.

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Making Broadband A Reality for Mississippians

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Bringing high-quality internet to every Louisiana home by 2029. Meet the visionary team rewriting the state's digital future and learn about their journey to bridge the digital divide!

ConnectLA's bold mission: Bringing high-quality internet to every Louisiana home by 2029. Meet the visionary team rewriting the state's digital future and learn about their journey to bridge the digital divide!

Bayou Broadband: Transforming Louisiana's Digital Landscape with ConnectLA

ConnectLA's bold mission: Bringing high-quality internet to every Louisiana home by 2029. Meet the visionary team rewriting the state's digital future and learn about their journey to bridge the digital divide.

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ConnectLA Scales Broadband Efforts with Ready's Challenge Process Coordinator

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Bayou Broadband: ConnectLA's Bold Mission

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United Fiber, a broadband service that's part of the United Electric Cooperative in Savannah, Missouri, is leveraging Ready's software and data platform to both improve the efficiency of its operations, and to grow its footprint.

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How United Fiber Saved Hundred of Hours Per Year Using Ready BOSS

Louisiana's approach to implementing BEAD offers valuable lessons for other states trying to save BEAD and get their funding deployed to their communities in need. Through careful program design and innovative implementation strategies, ConnectLA has achieved remarkable results while maintaining cost efficiency and promoting competition.At the heart of their success was a bidding structure that leveraged behavioral economics to drive down costs. By creating a two-round process where almost no awards were made in the first round, providers had to knuckle down and reduce costs by approximately 20% in the second round. This approach, combined with small project areas averaging 75 locations each, allowed providers to build flexible applications that included combinations of project areas that made fiscal sense while also ensuring comprehensive coverage.<img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdrCeFkadeEFS0jUsRrY5NT1WqbfZwpNoGZglcmbnTnhL5Ya2_Ac4QycWjhKQj1TSSRxIIebPhz0ZTPnh5ESgMF8PTiz1Wify9xCAtNPgVqav7RcJnM39bqrk3wRMq3TaV6iBXUgg?key=nb7ui4lnBEtFj1Yl-BN5hgwa">ConnectLA’s administrative approach aimed to minimize bureaucracy by prioritizing efficiency. They did this by streamlining the early stages of the application process without sacrificing accountability in the final stages. Rather than requiring extensive documentation upfront, they allowed applicants to qualify with minimal initial requirements, only requiring full documentation from winning bidders. This reduced barriers to entry while maintaining program integrity.&nbsp;The office also made several elements of the program clear up-front to incentivize participation and competition – allowing consortiums to apply together but receive separate award agreements, published benchmark funding amounts per project area and using fixed subawards with front-loaded payments to help smaller providers manage cash flow.The results speak volumes: 95% of locations will receive fiber-to-the-home service, with local providers winning approximately 75% of the funding despite no in-state preference. The entire process from initial bidding to preliminary awards took just six weeks, demonstrating that efficiency and thoroughness aren't mutually exclusive.<img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe05a4xQdOFCnZrKD5SqYus1Hs5NibLkFi8v19iry7ehHvfX03iFdlLb_wcx8toKky6bqRDxBhCFRX3j02uUty7GdPjjRxwxSscRg-6-TaJ3DzT8YjpwcrJ43ewSOj593VjE9JIDQ?key=nb7ui4lnBEtFj1Yl-BN5hgwa">Perhaps most tellingly, the competitive nature of the process was so robust that even winning bidders expressed disappointment at not winning more areas – a fact that the ConnectLA office says reflects the impartiality and competitive nature of their program. This healthy competition helped ConnectLA achieve their coverage goals while maintaining cost discipline, with prices generally tracking CostQuest estimates until reaching the most topographically challenging and isolated locations.For states currently designing their BEAD implementation strategies, Louisiana's experience suggests focusing on creating flexible, provider-friendly processes while maintaining strong competitive pressure. By combining streamlined administration with smart program design, states can achieve both universal coverage and cost efficiency in their broadband deployment efforts.

Louisiana’s BEAD program achieved 95% fiber-to-home coverage in six weeks by combining competitive bidding, streamlined administration, and provider-friendly processes. See how their approach offers a model for cost-effective, universal broadband deployment.

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How Louisiana Will FINISH BEAD

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<h3>Giving Broadband Directors the Bird's-Eye View They Deserve</h3>State broadband directors aren't just managing grant applications – they're architecting the future of connectivity in their states. It's like having the world's most complex Light World/Dark World map to navigate, except instead of searching for Moon Pearls and Master Swords, you're tracking the status of thousands of households while switching between layers of federal requirements and local needs. While charting this critical quest for your state, the last thing you need is to hunt through multiple systems just to get a clear picture of your BEAD Program status.<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Map2_76a8fe2177/Map2_76a8fe2177.png"></figure>Enter the Director's Dashboard (affectionately known as "Mission Control"), the newest addition to Ready.net's purpose-built suite of broadband solutions. Think of it as your command center, minus the Hollywood-style wall of flickering screens and ominous red buttons.<h3>Open Your Aperture&nbsp;</h3>What makes Mission Control special? It's the difference between looking through a keyhole and standing atop a mountain. In one unified view, directors can:<ul><li>Track the status of every broadband serviceable location (served, funded, underserved, or unserved)</li><li>Monitor challenge process metrics and types</li><li>Process progress, financial and compliance reports</li><li>Overview BEAD applications, including funding requests and match commitments</li><li>Dive deeper and explore any aspect of their program that needs attention</li></ul><figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Director_Dashboard_2_02f861d278/Director_Dashboard_2_02f861d278.png"></figure><figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Director_Dashboard_3_1d37f28aa1/Director_Dashboard_3_1d37f28aa1.png"></figure><h3>Bring the Correct Quest Items</h3>But here's the thing – Mission Control isn't just a dashboard. It's an integrated tool in Ready.net's end-to-end ecosystem of software designed specifically for the unique challenges of state broadband offices. Because let's face it, managing a multi-million dollar broadband infrastructure program shouldn't feel like trying to solve the Ice Palace with the wrong item loadout – off-the-shelf software just wasn't made for this quest. &nbsp;<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Menu_Screen_d14ae33524/Menu_Screen_d14ae33524.png"></figure>Your adventure to connect every household deserves purpose-built quest items that understand the complexity of BEAD programs and the importance of your work. Because when it comes to shaping the future of connectivity in your state, "good enough" simply will not cut it…<h3>Ready to Start Your Quest?</h3>Like any hero, you need the right equipment for the journey ahead. Schedule a demo of Mission Control today and see how it can illuminate your path forward.

The Director's Dashboard brings clarity to your broadband quest in one unified command center.

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A Link to Your State

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As light shines at the dawn of artificial intelligence, we’re already seeing transformation underway in nearly every sector. How might the government offices and agencies who work with utilities like broadband, energy & water benefit from the transformation?

AI can help government agencies optimize utilities like broadband, energy, and water for greater efficiency and compliance.

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Agents for Agencies

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State broadband offices have had a busy 2024 juggling challenge processes, preparing for an onslaught of BEAD applications, stakeholder engagement and many more issues thrown at their mighty, but often small teams.&nbsp;Going forward, states should protect their legacy of success by ensuring that the five pitfalls of geospatial grant administration are avoided. These pitfalls are:<h3>1. Fragmented tools → fragmented results</h3>Offices that try to build in-house tools or repurpose off-the-shelf software built for very different purposes tend to see heavily fragmented workflows and heavily fragmented program outcomes. Your success depends on your vision being enforced throughout the full lifecycle of your program, which requires a holistic platform approach. &nbsp;<h3>2. GIS as an island&nbsp;</h3>Many offices deal with maps through the 1960's lens of GIS. They purchase exquisite GIS systems that spit out fancy maps with no real purpose beyond visual display. Success in your program requires integrated geospatial reasoning, not fancy maps. &nbsp;<h3>3. The myth of linear adjudication</h3>Approaching adjudication and deconfliction as linear processes that can be solved with manual effort leads to suboptimal outcomes at best and can be disastrous. Hundreds or even thousands of wasted hours can be one cost of this pitfall, and worse. Adjudication is a complex, non-linear, iterative process, ideally one your office carries out with participants over the course of your program. &nbsp;<h3>4. Audit-ready or not?</h3>Unhappy providers are already taking legal action against state offices. Sub-grantee audits by federal agencies are a given. Every step taken by every member of your office must be accounted for. Making sure you securely store all provider-submitted info, track all communications with providers, and having an audit trail of your program are keys to ensuring your office, and all of your sub-grantees are audit-ready. &nbsp;<h3>5. Post-award Hell</h3>Imagine not knowing where your program stands until a few months after sub-grantees submit self-reported, manually assembled reports. Either someone from your office or your consultant needs to chase down paperwork every few months, then spend dozens of hours processing results before you know whether or not you're on track.Now imagine knowing at a glance, in near real time, where your office stands across all of your programs, with no additional effort on your office's part.&nbsp;<h2>Here’s how you can avoid these pitfalls:&nbsp;</h2><h3>1. Use a purpose-built, single source of truth platform</h3>With the BEAD showdown on the horizon, state broadband offices cannot risk any threats to their progress, such as team changes, misplaced documents or shoddy mapping – which are the downstream consequences of purchasing off-the-shelf software that is not purpose built to tackle BEAD.The Ready State Platform allows for you to run your entire process from challenge to allocation inside a&nbsp;single&nbsp;platform. Through the platform, states will be able to build custom project areas and expand upon existing ones while also having a deconfliction &amp; adjudication engine that can be tailored to their specific visions.&nbsp;The platform’s built-in location revision feature allows SBOs to negotiate back and forth allowing for an ISP to “concede” or “expand” their project area allowing them to cover the entire area of another application or give up all of the conflicted locations.&nbsp; &nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/6cEBjBA.gif" width="800" height="449" alt="Director's Dashboard"></div>&nbsp;<h3>2. Integrate geospatial reasoning</h3>Under the BEAD program, state broadband offices face the Herculean task of ensuring that their state’s share of the $42.5 billion dollars leaves no family behind in broadband. To accomplish this, geospatial technology must be incorporated in every step of the grant administration process. Doing so ensures that locations are properly visualized, project areas are clearly defined and that their state’s mapping is the source of truth for the state’s broadband reality.The Ready State Platform incorporates geospatial technology into every step of the BEAD process. This means no more relying on spreadsheets and location files, but instead having a clear, easy-to-use mapping system throughout the process. &nbsp;<h3>3. Iterate to amazing</h3>Your office cannot afford to view adjudication as a one and done, fire and forget type of task. State broadband directors have to shift their perspective and view iterative adjudication as the best opportunity to ensure that families aren’t left behind on&nbsp; the wrong side of the digital divide.&nbsp;Using the State Platform, grantors can submit specific revision requests or file a bulk request to review the selection of an applicant’s serviceable areas, network design, project scope, budget, community impact, affordability, and certification certification.Having all of these functionalities on a single platform streamlines the process and allows for an iterative process with fewer opportunities for mis-inputs and miscommunications that could result in costly delays and missed opportunities; every change between versions is saved, thereby giving your office the ability to compare and track changes to better understand how applicants respond to your feedback.Ultimately, this will result in fewer locations being left behind, fewer wasted months of complex work between multiple platforms, and fewer potential audit failures and unforeseen legal risks for your office.&nbsp; &nbsp;<h3>4. Be ready to for an audit…or two</h3>The Ready State Platform ensures that states are federal audit-ready with numerous tools, including Proof of Passings in conjunction with the ongoing Challenge Process Coordinator map update.&nbsp;BEAD applicants will also undoubtedly have questions throughout the&nbsp;reviewing, scoring, deconfliction, and adjudication processes&nbsp;that must be answered quickly by their state broadband office. Effective communication is crucial for successful, data-driven state broadband offices.Your State Platform will grant the opportunity for you to seamlessly communicate with providers directly through the same platform guiding your BEAD process. This also means that your office will have a database of communication with each provider that can be referenced for customer success or strategic purposes in the future.&nbsp; &nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Paperwork_vs_Real_Work_2_ec9dd452e5/Paperwork_vs_Real_Work_2_ec9dd452e5.jpg"></figure><h3>5. Automate reporting and compliance&nbsp;</h3>Attempting to manually adhere to reporting and compliance standards is a nonstarter. Offices have neither the luxury of time, the budget nor the manpower to do this work alone; reporting and compliance needs to be a seamless extension of reviewing, scoring, deconfliction, and adjudication.&nbsp;State broadband offices must hold all stakeholders to the highest standards of reporting and compliance. Throughout the BEAD process, states will face numerous federal audits and having a piecemeal program is a recipe for risk.&nbsp;States using the platform can ease the burden of reporting and compliance on both their office and providers while avoiding the market failure of previous broadband grant funding cycles.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>Remember what’s at stake&nbsp;</h2>State broadband offices know what’s at stake for families relying on them to bring affordable, reliable broadband. BEAD is the country’s largest and arguably last major investment in broadband.&nbsp;In the Year of BEAD, states have accomplished so much towards this effort. Allowing the pitfalls of geospatial administration to erode this progress is an opportunity that neither states nor providers can afford.

Is your state making costly errors in BEAD grant administration?

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Avoiding pitfalls in geospatial grant administration

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<h2>New York State of BEAD</h2><div class="raw-html-embed"><div>
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 Josh Breitbart’s office looks like a Zoom background. Except for the moving cars, you would swear it was one. 
 New York’s broadband lead is officially the Senior Vice President of ConnectALL, within New York’s chief economic development agency.
 While happy to talk with broadband.io, the New York broadband czar states that he would prefer that the story be about the governor as he says that ConnectALL is based on the governor's vision, with three central goals:
 <ul>
 <li>Make sure that there is broadband connectivity for every location in the state.</li>
 <li>Facilitate a robust broadband marketplace. </li>
 <li>Close the digital divide. Making sure that everybody not only has access to the infrastructure, but the ability to make use of it to achieve the outcomes of economic opportunity, health improvement, education, civic engagement, use of government services. </li>
 </ul>
 The New York broadband office (ConnectALL) team is a growing one with 19 employees currently. It is part of Empire State Development, the state’s economic development agency, working from offices in midtown Manhattan, Albany, and Utica.
 Breitbart says that the tagline for ConnectALL is ‘internet that works for New York. “Not only do we have it, but can people use it to do everything they need to, to thrive.”
</div></div><h2> Foundation for Success&nbsp;</h2>Breitbart explains that as soon as he took the reins in 2022, his first point of order was to uncover what the landscape looked like in terms of stakeholders and planning groups. He was pleasantly surprised to find that there was vast experience and lessons learned from past programs, “With a wide variety of partners at both the county and regional level who have been working on broadband for years, there’s a really strong foundation,” he says.&nbsp;This includes Empire State Development’s previous $500 million investment in broadband, which began in 2015, and counties that are part of federal organizations like the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Northern Border Regional Commission, both of which have been “providing funding for broadband planning or infrastructure for many years.”&nbsp;Many counties also have public or publicly controlled nonprofit regional fiber networks as well, bringing technical capabilities you would not normally find in communities.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>Building with BEAD</h2>Because New York has regional planning councils and counties that have been working on broadband for years, they baked that into their proposed subgrantee program, ensuring that regional partners would provide capacity support and facilitate county participation. There are points in the scoring for letters of support. Both, explains Breitbart, are critically important as there's a need for greater capacity with BEAD. “We even have a regional local assistance grant program where governments in the state can apply for funds to be used as either capacity support or planning support,” says Breitbart.&nbsp;He explains that ConnectAll is hyper-focused on building for each stage of a potential process. “Ultimately, when an ISP is going to deploy into an area, we want the counties to be aware, involved, and engaged because that's what's going to make it successful, not just in the deployment stage, but in the uptake and making sure that these are successful businesses operating throughout the state.”Breitbart believes that the key to success is and will be local knowledge because each area of the state has such a wide variance. “New York is a fantastic state, and it's fantastic in its diversity in every respect, demographically, topographically, economically,” says Breitbart.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>Billion with a B</h2>When added together, New York has a little more than $1.3 billion in funding to deliver universal access and close the digital divide. Specifically, that’s $664.6 million in BEAD, $345.5 million in CPF and, explains Breitbart, “We’re also very fortunate in that we have a state legislature, very committed, very supportive of the governor's vision for ConnectALL and has contributed $300 million of state funding. So, all in, ConnectALL is responsible for over $1.3 billion of public funds.”&nbsp;And in establishing Connect All, New York’s governor has announced five programs:&nbsp;<ul><li>The Affordable Housing Connectivity Program – A $100 million subsidy to bring broadband infrastructure to affordable and public housing.&nbsp;</li><li>The Municipal Infrastructure Program – $228 million in funding for public and publicly controlled infrastructure to connect ‘tens of thousands’ of homes.&nbsp;</li><li>The ConnectALL Deployment Program – These are the BEAD dollars, $664 million.&nbsp;</li><li>The Digital Equity Program, with a commitment of $50 million to address non-infrastructure barriers to internet adoption and use, drawing on an initial federal allocation of approximately $37 million.&nbsp;</li><li>Connectivity Innovation to advance new broadband solutions, technologies, and business models to meet the needs of rural and low-income communities in the state.&nbsp;</li></ul>&nbsp;<h2>No Cherries left in the 2%&nbsp;</h2>The BEAD program, opines Breitbart, does not reward large states that have already made significant investments in connectivity. And that’s exactly where New York is, with less than 2% of the state left to connect. “By definition, what we have left to connect is the hardest of the hardest to connect. I am realistic about how difficult almost every single one of these locations is to reach.”&nbsp;So, in essence, while more than $650 million for less than 100K unserved and underserved might sound like a layup, New York will need to be strategic in how it sets its “extremely high cost per location threshold” to maximize the number of those locations that can be reached with a fiber connection.Breitbart believes that the incumbents, both large ISPs and small community networks want to connect everyone. He’s optimistic that the funding will be enough to connect everyone but acknowledges that “if there's any portion that's not doable through this program, then we'll keep working because that's the nature of ConnectALL.”“It's still an unprecedented level of federal support. So that gives me great optimism,” sats Breitbart. “We’re working with communities and companies that have experience reaching very hard-to-reach locations. I am hopeful because I know we've got good ISP partners.”&nbsp;New York is currently going back and forth to come to a conclusion on project areas, sharing iterations to get feedback from the public, ISPs, and regional and county partners. ConnectALL will not finalize the project areas until the final list of eligible locations is approved by NTIA following the state challenge process.&nbsp;<h2>New York’s Challenge Process&nbsp;</h2>New York went into the challenge process with approximately 95,000 BEAD eligible BSLs, as they’re presently wrapping up the adjudication phase of the challenge process, they plan to hand in the final count to the NTIA later this summer.&nbsp;Breitbart reiterates that ConnectALL is taking “the long view of the connectivity challenge and building the relationships that we need throughout the process. Local knowledge is so important because it really does require that level of local understanding.”“We have a beautiful tapestry of the stakeholders including communities and ISPs,” says Breitbart. “And right now we are in the pre-qualification phase of the application so we can get a good sense of which ISPs are ready to participate. They’re all very active and engaged, but will they respond to the opportunities?”&nbsp;With NTIA’s August 13 announcement of the Initial Proposal Volume Two approval, Breitbart says the grant application is on track to open in the Fall.The first round will be a green light for subgrantee applications that are for 100 percent of a given project area with full fiber. Possible future rounds will look at alternative coverage possibilities and alternative technologies. He anticipates awards beginning to be handed out in 2025, following NTIA approval of New York’s Final Proposal.&nbsp;<h2>New York Through and Through&nbsp;</h2>I ask every state broadband leader why they do this… if they hate themselves, love long hours, or are just gluttons for punishment.&nbsp;Breitbart smiles when I ask him “why” do this, to which he explains, “I truly love this state, and I have always been motivated by the power of communication and expanding the opportunity for people to communicate, to tell their stories, to come together and to act as a community. And the internet is the critical infrastructure of that.”&nbsp;He recounts a career dotted with nonprofits, technology projects, and even a study of the Philly WiFi project from two decades ago. As part of the DC think tank New America, he supported communities in Detroit and Philadelphia implement projects under the federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.&nbsp; In 2015, Breitbart, whose family has been in the same neighborhood of Brooklyn for four generations, was thrilled to come back home and begin working in government at the local level in City Hall as part of New York’s Mayor’s Office. Ultimately, in 2022, he was appointed to the job he has now, one he calls a “dream opportunity because it was an opportunity to serve my community and my state.”“I just look at this as an opportunity to contribute, says Breitbart. “And that's what motivates all the people in this office is that we have that shared mission.”I’ve been part of non-profit organizations and been in mission-driven environments, but it's very different to be in government, and time and again, find a colleague who, if presented with the opportunity to do a bit more, to bring more benefit to the state, they'll take that opportunity,” expands Breitbart. “How could you not get up for that?”<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/joshua_podium_1_b805d83580/joshua_podium_1_b805d83580.jpeg"></figure>

New York’s ConnectALL initiative, led by Evan Breitbart, is using over $1.3 billion in funding to expand broadband access across the state. Discover how local knowledge and strategic planning are key to achieving universal connectivity.

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Meet Josh Breitbart

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<h2>Jim's South Carolina <s>Retirement</s> Adventure</h2>For someone with a big job, lofty expectations, and plenty of pressure, Jim Stritzinger (Director, SC Broadband Office) is way happier than he should be.&nbsp;The native of Delaware who fell in love with the state during childhood family vacations, is living his best life in The Palmetto State, running a team of six in Columbia.&nbsp;<h2>Stritzinger’s Prologue&nbsp;</h2>Near the turn of the millennium, Jim found his company being purchased, leading to the opportunity to move to Hilton Head, raise his girls, and play a lot of golf.&nbsp;&nbsp;He recalls that after eight years he did some self-reflection and realized that he was “living on a barrier island and my brain is still on fire.”&nbsp;After a variety of career hops, he became the Executive Director of non-profit Connect South Carolina in 2014 and noticed that… gasp… broadband maps were a collection of hyperbole, wishes, and lies. “I was an electrical engineer and a data geek with a hypothesis that the federal broadband maps were really awful. I knew many of the ISPs were significantly overstating their advertised speeds.”&nbsp;As an entrepreneur/engineer, the faulty maps continued to perturb him, so he decided to do something about it in 2019 when he got to work creating broadband maps with the assistance of Congressman Jim Clyburn, Ookla, his own expertise, as well as some common sense.&nbsp;The process for him started with ignoring advertised speeds and instead focusing on the broadband technology available per census block. For example, if one area was DSL, he deduced that instead of 25/3 Mbps, maybe they are getting 6/1 Mbps, at best. He took the best available technology in each census block, projected speeds, and produced the first iteration of a complete set of&nbsp;accurate South Carolina broadband maps.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/SC_Team_smaller_07c92bafbe/SC_Team_smaller_07c92bafbe.png"></figure><h2>With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility</h2>Stritzinger’s maps were catching on and landing him consulting contracts with local ISPs who paid&nbsp; him to map their own service territories. He describes what happened next as receiving his “dream phone call” came offering the SC state broadband post in March of 2021.&nbsp;The pandemic was the impetus, as Stritzinger says that the State of South Carolina had never invested “even a penny on broadband,”and was now allocating $50 million. This was broken up into $30 million designated for infrastructure, $20 million for hotspots for kids so they could do their homework, and what was left over to be used to stand up a broadband mapping effort.&nbsp;Created in July of 2021, the office is housed under the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff because, Stritzinger explains, it was the trusted place that had telecom background thanks to required oversight of South Carolina Universal Service Funds.&nbsp;<h2>From Zero to $1 Billion Hero</h2>It was a big change to go from zero dollars in June 2020 to where we stand today - over a billion dollars as of June 2023.“When I started, I was a single-person office inheriting a $30 million state grant program,” says Stritzinger. “Combine this with the South Carolina General Assembly allocating $400 million ARPA ($215 million SLFRF and $185 million CPF) in May of 2022, and in June 2023 a ~$551 million allocation of BEAD.”&nbsp;That’s a rapid change for a state that had never invested in broadband, says Stritzinger, “in less than two years, we go from zero to $30 million dollars, one-man broadband office to a full-time, six-person team with a billion-dollar budget.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>First Things First&nbsp;</h2>On June 30, Stritzinger and his team announced&nbsp;<a href="https://ors.sc.gov/news/scbbo-completes-historic-400-million-american-rescue-plan-commitment-connect-over-112380">the completion of its $400 million American Rescue Plan (ARPA) grant program.</a> In all, the grants will result in more than 13K miles of fiber that will serve 112,380 BSLs through 19 ISPs.Stritzinger explains that he and his team have been extremely thorough and meticulous with these grants to help ensure BSLs have enforceable commitments in place, “Every home that we fund with ARPA dollars is one less home that we need to fund for BEAD.”&nbsp;<h2>BEAD Begins&nbsp;</h2>Stritzinger explains that because South Carolina has lined up ARPA commitments, the BEAD Challenge Process includes these “enforceable commitments” and the BEAD Challenge is now complete.&nbsp;The enforceable commitments, predicts Stritzinger, will lower the number of BSLs that BEAD will need to reach and will be less than 32,000 total locations. For those keeping score at home (and for those who are alone), that’s ~$551 million for less than 32,000 locations. Stritzinger anticipates the 32K locations mostly getting fiber, save some extremely remote rural locations (i.e., barrier islands).&nbsp;As for South Carolina’s timeline for Volume 2 approval, Stritzinger notes that his office is in no hurry. In fact, he admits that “Candidly, we volunteered to be last. No state wants to be deploying ARPA dollars while at the same time trying to do BEAD. It's impossible.”More than just the strain running both ARPA and BEAD simultaneously puts on the broadband office, Stritzinger points out that to have both programs on their radar is “near impossible for the Internet Service Providers. ARPA has completely consumed our ISPs and to try to drop BEAD on them at the same time just wouldn’t be possible.”He notes that ‘everybody’s exhausted’ and believes that “when all the dust settles, five, ten years from now, I think the states that played it slower with BEAD are going to be the ones that get rewarded the most.”&nbsp;<h2>Timeline&nbsp;</h2>Stritzinger anticipates a volume two approval by the end of September, equating to the 365-day window starting around October 1, 2024.&nbsp;That puts South Carolina into the 4th quarter of 2025 for Final Proposal submission, followed by what Stritzinger says will be NTIA approvals and a lengthy permit process. Therefore, BEAD network construction is probably not going to take place much before the summer of 2026. “We've tried to do as good of a job with our ARPA money as we could, recognizing that BEAD won't start construction until the summer of 2026,” says Stritzinger. “I'm relentlessly trying to get every home we can connected before then.”BEAD project areas in South Carolina will be zip codes. Stritzinger is not overly concerned that ISPs will apply, stating that his perspective is “Some ISPs are going to want to apply just on a defensive mode because of the way the scoring works. ISPs can't allow a couple of mushroom BSLs to pop up in your service area and allow a competitor to come in. There's going to be some defensive applicants.”&nbsp; &nbsp;<h2>Non-Deployment Funding</h2>Back to the math of ~$551 million for less than 32K BSLs - Stritzinger says it’s a great ‘problem’ to have because he can designate approximately $232 million to BEAD Non-Deployment programs. “I'm working with NTIA on some special things that I'm personally extremely excited [about]. I'm now in a kind of fantasy land for being a broadband director, because we're going to be able to invest heavily in a variety of areas other states will not be able to.”&nbsp;He has projects on the drawing board including everything from middle-mile fiber rings to improve statewide backhaul to a $7 million stipend program for broadband staff that should “inject 150 mission critical people into the bloodstream of South Carolina very fast.”Additional investments he anticipates include $5 million for multiple dwelling unit infrastructure and $20 million slated to build a Virtual Primary Care program in South Carolina.Virtual Primary Care is about replacing expensive ambulance transport for low income, critical-care patients to the ER for primary care visits. “By partnering with the Medical University of South Carolina/SC Teleheath Alliance, we’ll equip these homes with connected medical equipment, train the residents how to use it – and – cover the annual cost of high-speed broadband service for each home,” says Stritzinger. “This is our creative approach to affordability and should wind up simultaneously saving the state substantial money.”&nbsp;“Therefore, with $232 plus million dollars pointed in the BEAD Non-Deployment direction, I think we can make some magic happen,” extols Stritzinger.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/in_the_field_1_86a049d6fa/in_the_field_1_86a049d6fa.png"></figure><h2>You Cannot Wipe that Smile off His Face!&nbsp;</h2>You can tell that Stritzinger has found his calling.&nbsp;His exuberance abounds as he states “I'm very blessed. I've got the job of my lifetime, the capstone on anything I've ever done.”He reiterates that these blessings include a great staff, a supportive legislature, and his peers. He shares that “the state broadband directors have all become friends” which seems obvious for those of us watching. “As I've gotten to know the other broadband directors, I've become aware that they all have a superpower. Each one kind of came into their role from a different place. Some came into it from a digital equity posture. Some came into it with federal grant experience. Others were political appointees; however, all are talented and willing to help each other.”He wraps up our conversation saying that “technology has been really good to me over the years.”&nbsp;At age 60, Stritzinger sees this post as a chance to “leave a legacy,” and he seems poised to do just that.&nbsp;

The man building a legacy of success in the Palmetto State.

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Meet Jim Stritzinger

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<h2>Vermont’s Do-Gooding State Broadband Director</h2>Christine Hallquist explains to broadband.io that “In 2016 I got on a do-gooder streak. I became a do-gooder. I said to myself, I can't go into retirement watching without doing something.”She laughs in a way that’s almost apologetic, saying that readers can ‘do the math’ of what happened in 2016 to inspire her, but she was so activated that she became the democratic nominee for governor in Vermont in 2018.While she lost to Governor Phil Scott, who she says is very popular ‘for good reason,’ she became part of his administration in 2021 when he recruited her to run the broadband office.Governor Scott clearly remembered that broadband was a key piece of Hallquist’s 2018 platform when he appointed her Executive Director of Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB). Prior to this she was formerly the CEO of Vermont Electric cooperative, which serves a majority of Vermont. She recalls that in 2003 her board of directors asked her to get broadband to rural Vermont.“I've been working on this ever since, have tried every type of technology, and early on, probably by about 2008, I personally concluded that if it's not fiber, it's not broadband,” explains Hallquist.&nbsp;<h2>Already Off and Running</h2>During Hallquist’s first three years as Executive Director, the state’s seen its fiber broadband coverage double from 25% of Vermont’s broadband serviceable locations (BSLs) coverage to 50%.“Our Vermont legislature has concluded that we're going to get fiber to every address in the state, making us the only state committed to that,” says Hallquist. “By the end of 2028, we should be over 95%.”&nbsp;<h2>P3s Critical to Success</h2>Hallquist recounts her own 2021 estimates on what it would take to get fiber connections across the state with and without private investments, “I said, if you build it, if you don't take advantage of public private partnerships, it's going to cost $1.2 billion. If you take advantage of private partners, it'll be closer to $550 million.”Hallquist says that under the leadership of the Vermont Community Broadband Board, legislation has been passed to better enable public-private partnerships to get fiber to every address. Fiber, she explains, is critical in Vermont because “wireless does not work in Vermont because of our geography, our mountains and hills as well as the fact we’re greater than 80% forest lands.”&nbsp;<h2>CUDs and CPF</h2>What has worked in Vermont, following the ECFiber model (founded in 2007 in Southeast Vermont), are Communications Union Districts, (CUDs) that were enabled by legislation in 2015. These CUDs are developed in response to the rural broadband challenge and the idea that banding together, communities are more likely to find a solution. There are <a href="https://publicservice.vermont.gov/vt-community-broadband-board-vcbb/vermont-communications-union-districts">TEN CUDs</a> in Vermont, many established shortly after the pandemic. Eight of these ten are servicing customers.Most recently, Vermont Community Broadband Board awarded a $20.2 million construction grant to CUD <a href="https://www.nwfiberworx.com/">Northwest Fiberworx</a>. “We’re using CPF ($113 million), SLFR (State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds) as well as some state funds to bring us close to $530 million in grant funding that’s out right now,” says Hallquist.To-date of this funding, VCBB reports awarding a total of $206 million for broadband buildout in Vermont.&nbsp;<h2>BEAD is Fiber First in Vermont</h2>Vermont will have approximately 25,000 deconflicted unserved and underserved locations that BEAD will need to assist in covering. One ‘catch’ reports Hallquist is that while Vermont is concentrating on connecting the ‘on-grid’ locations, there’s a preponderance (approximately 70%) of off-grid locations that are hunting camps and only occupied a few weeks a year. “We’ve told the NTIA that we're not going to serve hunting camps and I think we’re close to agreement on that,” reports Hallquist.But back to the program, Vermont was allotted $229 million in BEAD funding. The challenge process is complete, and the state awaits approval of Volume Two, which Hallquist reports as ‘getting close.’With that, Vermont plans on starting the bidding process either later this month or in August with what’s being called a ‘pre-proposal’ phase.Vermont is requiring interested bidders to participate in this process that will out-of-the-gate define interest and even allocation. “If somebody comes into the pre-proposal phase with a plan to serve the entire area with fiber, then when we’ll greenlight them for the proposal process and we won't consider anything else,” says Hallquist. “The thing we want is 100% fiber first. For the areas that propose mixed technologies in the pre-proposal phase, then we'll leave that open for bid in round one. In other words, if we've got one bid or more, 100% fiber will decide in the pre-proposal process, who's going to get the bid and if someone can deliver that, we'll immediately start,” says Hallquist.Vermont’s bid areas will match the CUDs as 218 of Vermont’s 252 towns are in CUDs. Hallquist predicts that many of the remaining unserved and underserved will be very small pockets that can be reached by existing carriers with line extension assistance.Hallquist is very optimistic as there’s already a great deal having been built and being built in the past few years. But she reports that “If we get no bids, then we’ll look at changing the bid areas and reaching out ourselves [to potential carriers].”We're hoping to finalize all this by the end of December.&nbsp;<h2>Is It Enough?</h2>Vermont attributes receiving 2x what was predicted in some circles for BEAD. Hallquist attributes this to a very aggressive approach to broadband map challenges before allocations were announced.But will state funding, CPF/ARPA money, and BEAD be enough to bring Vermont “Universal Access?” Hallquist thinks so when she says that “It gets us there with some level of service.”This is when our conversation turns to the BEAD program, its guidelines, and the challenges. First up, the match component is a big barrier for community networks, so Vermont’s governor has tried to remove this by allocating an additional $30 million for the purpose of covering matching funds for communities. “We think we can come up with enough match to cover our community networks full and then they can get their infrastructure paid for while at the same time we're counting on those private partners to hit some of the areas and come in with their own match,” explains Hallquist.&nbsp;<h2>No Shortage of Opinions</h2>Hallquist was the 17th State leader I’ve interviewed, and one thing I walked away from the conversation with was that she’d really have a lot of positive impact on the country and the program, given the chance.Rather than brushing past these, it’s important to hear what this industry veteran had to say and consider her advice and whether anything can be applied to BEAD moving forward. She calls the BEAD program ‘flawed from the start’ for numerous reasons, including:<ul><li>“If you look at how FDR setup electric cooperatives, he signed an order to say that these will be regulated territories to prevent encroachment. But in this case, we're doing it wrong as we're allowing encroachment to happen, making the business case worse.”</li><li>“We are not going to reach our nationwide [Universal Access] goal because of the match requirement. We don’t anticipate any unbid areas but states like Texas may see up to 40% of no bid areas.”</li><li>“A lot of the no-bid areas are the result of simple math. My math shows, and I haven't had anybody really argue this, that if you get less than four paying customers per mile, even if you give the network away, you can't support it because the operation and maintenance costs. You still don't have a business, sustainable business plan. So, I've been pounding on the NTIA to say, look, this is not going to work.”</li><li>“There’s not enough capacity with a limited number of line workers in our country. You must use a first-class line worker and there's just not enough capacity in this country to get it done. I’m not sure what we can do about this as the cows are out of the barn.”</li></ul>&nbsp;<h2>The Vermont Community Broadband Board</h2>Currently eleven people work within the VCBB, a number Hallquist calls a ‘healthy number.’ They’re overseen by an independent board made up two members assigned by the governor, one by the state house, one by the state senate, rounded out to five total members with a member elected by the public.“I come from the private sector, so I had no idea what kind of a bureaucracy I was stepping into, explains Hallquist. “I’m grateful to have folks on my staff that can help me navigate the ins and outs of government bureaucracy.”Hallquist admits that she was ‘worried,’ about being able to have the staff needed because the public sector can’t compete with compensation rates in the private sector. But today she’s thrilled with her team saying, “These people come here because they're mission focused, really committed to the job, and a passionate group of people.”“I told my staff that this is pretty much an impossible task, universal access, right? With all the forces going against us, we must be perfect to execute this thing. And I think we will be. We've got a lot of help with a good board and a very supportive state. I don't think all the states have what we have. We’re lucky. It's about the whole collective will of everyone to make sure everything comes together to make this succeed.”<div class="raw-html-embed"><div style="display: flex; justify-content: center; align-items: center; margin-top: 24px">
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The maverick getting it done in the Green Mountain State

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Meet Christine Hallquist

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For months, broadband industry experts have sounded the alarm that the decisions made over this year have and will affect the trajectory of broadband in America for decades to come.&nbsp;Standing more than halfway through 2024 – the Year of BEAD – and mere days before Mountain Connect 2024, we’ve reached an inflection point.&nbsp;The question remains for providers: Are you prepared to answer your nation’s call to grow your broadband services to families that are currently unserved and underserved?&nbsp;&nbsp;<h4>The BEAD showdown is here.&nbsp;</h4>State broadband offices across the country have launched their challenge processes with Louisiana and Delaware among the first states to have their challenge processes approved. Louisiana also was the&nbsp;<a href="https://ready.net/blog/louisiana-is-ready-for-bead">first state to have both volumes of its initial BEAD proposal approved</a> last year.&nbsp;Over the next few months, as more states begin to receive approval for their challenge processes, the focus will begin to shift from planning projects to deploying funds.&nbsp;Broadband experts have warned for months that 90 days simply&nbsp;<a href="https://broadband.money/blog/think-you-can-complete-your-bead-application-in-90-days-think-again">isn’t enough time to successfully complete a BEAD application</a>.&nbsp; Louisiana, for instance, had a 30-day pre-qualification window that required a consortium pre-qualification application and a company specific pre-qualification application to be submitted by Sunday, July 14. Those who didn’t submit on-time are<a href="https://connect.la.gov/bead/"> ineligible to submit applications</a> for a share of Louisiana’s BEAD allocation.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h4>Time is running out&nbsp;</h4>Families without broadband service are relying on providers – whether that’s local ISPs, rural electric cooperatives, or municipal broadband networks – to do their share to narrow the digital divide.&nbsp;Providers who plan to expand their broadband footprint through BEAD are already being empowered with tools to ensure their success.&nbsp;By&nbsp;<a href="https://ready.net/products/bead-grant-reporting-automation-software">automating thier reporting and compliance</a> obligations, providers will be able to pursue BEAD grants with confidence and without hiring an army. By subtracting mountains of paperwork, providers will be able to focus on the most important task at hand: connecting more families to broadband.&nbsp;Numerous efforts have also been made to simplify the BEAD process, such as eliminating Letter of Credit requirements in exchange for&nbsp;<a href="https://broadband.money/blog/everything-broadband-pros-need-to-know-about-performance-bonds">performance bonds</a>, have been made to encourage broader provider participation. Many of these efforts have also been previously chronicled by the Fiber Broadband Association in its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfandgsDKFVQ-qn7ytPx5_8rTCpo9mV_L">“Where’s the Funding” series</a> released last year.&nbsp;These efforts don’t make applying for BEAD easy, but they make it within reach for thousands of providers who have the opportunity to make a positive impact in their communities.&nbsp;<h4> Remember what’s at stake&nbsp;</h4>Providers know more than anyone else what’s at stake for America if we miss this opportunity.&nbsp;Improved broadband access not only narrows the digital divide but ensures that America lives up to its promise of equal opportunity for all.&nbsp; &nbsp;

It’s the absolute last chance for anyone still sitting on the fence for BEAD 

Providers, it's the BEAD showdown

If you're on the fence, it's your last chance

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It's the BEAD showdown 

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The BEAD showdown is here.

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The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), a federal subsidy which made internet service more affordable for nearly 60 million Americans, expired on June 1.&nbsp;The program’s end came as Congress failed to fully fund the program despite the urging of&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/broadbandmoney/status/1787565735641841979">policy experts,</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.digitalinclusion.org/acp-advocacy/">consumer advocates</a> and<a href="https://broadbandbreakfast.com/supporters-rally-for-affordable-internet-access-through-acp/"> activists</a> since the beginning of the year.&nbsp;ACP, which began in 2021 and was administered by the FCC, provided low-income Americans with a monthly credit up to $30 per month to put towards their internet bills, and up to $75 per month for those living on tribal lands.&nbsp;Bridging the digital divide for low-income households has been a major priority for state broadband offices building their plans for both BEAD and Digital Equity funding.&nbsp;What comes next for providers depends on measures taken by individual state broadband offices – and whether or not Congress later decided to make the Affordable Connectivity Program more permanent.&nbsp;&nbsp;Some states have launched plans to fill the gap left by ACP’s expiration&nbsp;&nbsp;Providers need to reach out to their state broadband offices to determine their course of action in ensuring that low-income families can remain connected.&nbsp;Some states, like Pennsylvania, have established plans for ensuring that low-income families continue to have access to affordable broadband service. Per Pennsylvania’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.benton.org/blog/pennsylvanias-plan-affordable-broadband?utm_campaign=Newsletters&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=sendgrid">plan</a>, BEAD-supported providers must continue to offer an unsubsidized low cost plan. Low-income customers, in turn, are responsible for paying the full cost of those plans without the ACP subsidy.&nbsp;Broadband experts, such as Philip Macres of Klein Law Group,&nbsp;<a href="http://expressed">expressed&nbsp;</a>earlier this year that there was hope for the NTIA to address this issue through a match program.&nbsp;“NTIA can look at a match [program] and say, ‘We’re gonna include in that match some type of low income program,’ which they have to perform over a period of time to maybe get us over the hump,” Macres said.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/replace_with_this_01fb83063b/replace_with_this_01fb83063b.png"></figure>Some providers are continuing to provide broadband service&nbsp;Numerous internet service providers, ranging from large providers like Verizon and Spectrum to rural providers like the Vermont Telephone Company, have earned&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/31/fact-sheet-president-biden-highlights-commitments-to-customers-by-internet-service-providers-to-offer-affordable-high-speed-internet-plans-calls-on-congress-to-restore-funding-for-affordable-connect/#:~:text=Today%2C%20the%20White%20House%20highlights,continue%20accessing%20low%2Dcost%20internet.">recognition</a> for their continued commitment to offer plans at $30 or less to low-income families.&nbsp;There are also numerous smaller ISPs across the country offering low-income plans for customers in exchange for them keeping service,&nbsp;<a href="https://potsandpansbyccg.com/2024/05/21/isps-and-the-end-of-acp/">as outlined last month&nbsp;</a>by CCG Consulting’s Doug Dawson.&nbsp;Providers interested in offering a low-income option should start by inquiring about the eligibility of their new and existing customers, Dawson said.&nbsp;“Most ISPs don't ask this simple question when speaking to customers,” Dawson said. “If ISPs want to have a low-income product, they must always ask new or existing customers if they qualify and then make it easy for them to enroll.”&nbsp;It's also worth noting that it isn't uncommon for small, non-traditional providers to simply not be able to afford a low-income option, Dawson said.&nbsp;“Financing a $30 discount comes straight out of an ISP's bottom line,” Dawson said. “They may not sound like a lot, but the smaller the ISP, the harder it is to be able to afford that. Most small ISPs don't have a margin as large as that discount – so that means losing money on every customer they connect.” Congress still can make the ACP permanent&nbsp;In May , members of the U.S. Senate proposed&nbsp;<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4317/text">legislation</a> that would have provided $6 billion in funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program. The proposed legislation which earned&nbsp;<a href="https://problemsolverscaucus.house.gov/media/press-releases/bipartisan-problem-solvers-caucus-backs-legislation-to-protect-internet-access-for-low-income-families">bipartisan support</a> would have ensured enhanced targeting of communities in need and minimized waste.&nbsp;Unfortunately, the legislation was not able to pass before the May 31 deadline, but the contents of the legislation has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.naco.org/news/us-senate-eyes-funding-affordable-connectivity-program-through-broader-telecommunications">proposed as additions to other legislative funding proposals</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;Providers must remember what’s at stake&nbsp;As providers and their customers face uncertainty ahead, it’s important to remember what’s at stake in BEAD and beyond.&nbsp;Broadband access doesn’t simply close the digital divide, but closes divides in education, healthcare and culture. Let’s not lose the shot that our country’s largest and arguably last major investment in broadband.&nbsp; &nbsp;

Here’s what’s being done to ensure that low income families have broadband access. 

What does the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program mean for millions of low-income Americans? 

Affordable Connectivity Program is over. What's next. 

The Affordable Connectivity Program has expired. What comes next? 

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What's next after the end of the ACP? 

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What comes after the Affordable Connectivity Program? 

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States, territories, and tribal governments are at the foot of Mt.&nbsp;<a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/broadband-equity-access-and-deployment-program">BEAD</a>; they are not only expected to navigate the dispersion of $42 billion, but also juggle numerous&nbsp;<a href="https://ready.net/blog/a-fool-proof-recipe-for-stakeholder-engagement">stakeholder relationships</a>, including consultants.Under BEAD, these government entities must award millions to subgrant recipients, with the goal of building out broadband infrastructure for&nbsp;<a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/unserved-location">unserved</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/underserved-location">underserved locations</a>, as well as connecting CAIs, or <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/community-anchor-institution">community anchor institutions</a>.&nbsp;Entities face tight deadlines and strict federal guidelines to deploy their funding. Funding recipients must respect individual state requirements, Fair Labor Act laws, trade restrictions and keep secure, detailed records of every step of their journey.&nbsp;As a result of these guidelines, entities must seriously consider utilizing software tools that support their efforts. Failure to do so comes with numerous risks, including clawbacks of federal funding and lawsuits from ISPs, or&nbsp;<a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/isp-or-provider">internet service providers</a>, and others impacted.&nbsp;Here’s some ways that entities working with consultants can leverage data-driven software tools to maximize their investment:&nbsp;<h2>Meeting deadlines&nbsp;</h2>The NTIA’s BEAD NOFO, or the&nbsp;<a href="https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-05/BEAD%20NOFO.pdf">BEAD Notice of Funding Opportunity</a>,&nbsp;outlines specific deadlines and timelines for states, tribal governments and U.S. territories throughout the BEAD process.&nbsp;Entities so far have been issued&nbsp;<a href="https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/news/latest-news/biden-harris-administration-awards-29-million-louisiana-first-internet-all">initial planning funds</a>,&nbsp;submitted their five-year plans and Volume I and II initial proposals. Louisiana was the&nbsp;<a href="https://ready.net/blog/louisiana-is-ready-for-bead">first state in the country</a> to receive approval for both its Volume I and II proposals.&nbsp;States have flexibility in conducting their challenge process although there are some parameters set by the NTIA.&nbsp;Challenge processes must allow for local governments, nonprofits and broadband service providers to “challenge” a determination made by the state in its initial proposal regarding which locations are underserved, underserved or operate as a community anchor institution thus possessing subgrant eligibility.&nbsp;Broadly speaking, the challenge process is supposed to allow time for “a unit of local government, nonprofit organization, or broadband service provider” to “challenge a determination made by the Eligible Entity in the Initial Proposal” regarding which locations are underserved, unserved, or CAIs, and thus, eligible for the subgrants.&nbsp; Designated consultants must be equipped with the appropriate tools to serve entities aiming to succeed in BEAD.&nbsp; <a href="https://ready.net/products/challenge-process-coordinator">Ready’s Challenge Process Coordinator</a> provides comprehensive services to states undergoing their challenge process. This includes detailed speed tests, specific datasets at the neighborhood level and robust collaborative workflows that allow entities and their consultants to focus their efforts and resources more efficiently to close their digital divide.&nbsp;Applicants face a myriad of complex requirements which vary by state and a&nbsp;<a href="https://broadband.money/blog/think-you-can-complete-your-bead-application-in-90-days-think-again">tight timeline that must be adhered to in order to be successful in BEAD</a>. (Hint: If you’re an applicant reading this after the application has become public, it might be too late!)&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Application_Review_png_a5ba2b454f/Application_Review_png_a5ba2b454f.png"></figure><h2>Meeting Reporting and Compliance Requirements</h2>It doesn’t end with deadlines for states either. Entities must be sure that they’re properly managing their data and fulfilling specific reporting and compliance requirements.&nbsp;For states, the reporting and compliance requirements are staggering. They are time consuming, labor intensive, and come with no margin for error. Entities are expected to collect and maintain data about specific projects and deployment areas, workforce data, weather-and-climate related risks and a myriad of other factors.&nbsp;A&nbsp;<a href="https://ready.net/blog/data-driven-state-broadband-offices">data-driven state broadband office</a> strives for transparency in its record keeping&nbsp; and, more importantly, eagerly seeks to avoid subjectivity and ambiguity at all costs.&nbsp;Ready’s Grantor Platform supports entities and their consultants through managing the vast amount of data through every stage of the BEAD process, including the challenge process and ongoing reporting and compliance requirements, thus decreasing the man hours necessary to fulfill these obligations.Officials and consultants can view and compare detailed network build costs across their project areas taking advantage of optimal pathways to connect every home in need, regardless of technology. This macro-level view of the state’s current broadband offerings – alongside socioeconomic and geospatial data – allows for leaders to access a full picture in order to make data-informed decisions.&nbsp;Officials and consultants can view detailed network build costs across their state or governing area, and weigh the needs in each part of the state. They can also identify optimal pathways to connect every home in need, using fiber and wireless designs gathered from across the state, using Ready to apply automatic mathematical models.<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Optimizer_png_1_e7ca6af4bb/Optimizer_png_1_e7ca6af4bb.png"></figure>By providing both a macro-level view of the state’s current broadband service offerings, coupled with socioeconomic and geospatial place data, as well as micro-level views of each broadband serviceable location and county, officials and their consultants can zoom in and out of any given area, and get a full picture of the needs in one area compared to the needs across the state.&nbsp;Ready’s Grantor Platform also provides a cache of post-grant functionalities, including project monitoring, management, and automated compliance reporting allowing for entities and consultants to proceed without worry about unfair scrutiny of their decisions.&nbsp;Ultimately, these features enable states to ensure that their projects are on track, compliant with regulations, and deliver&nbsp; desired outcomes.<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/BEAD_CPC_png_942b32465e/BEAD_CPC_png_942b32465e.png"></figure><h2> A Win-Win for Entities and Consultants&nbsp;</h2>Partnering with Ready serves as a win-win for entities and consultants eager to simplify and streamline adherence to BEAD regulations, and maximize the multi-billion dollar investment in broadband infrastructure.&nbsp;Leveraging Ready’s comprehensive software solutions allows for state broadband offices and consultants to maintain control and security over its data, ensure resource allocation, and meet their entity’s broadband objectives.&nbsp;In short, states will have solutions configured to their specific needs while owning the data model allowing for consultants to focus on solving complex problems – rather than shuffling through yet another Excel sheet.&nbsp;

States, territories, and tribal governments are at the foot of Mt. BEAD; they are not only expected to navigate the dispersion of $42 billion, but also juggle numerous stakeholder relationships, including consultants.

States can get the most from their consultants using compliant, fast, secure web software 

How states can get the most from their consultants 

The key lies in compliant, fast, secure web software 

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Unlocking consultant’s highest potential 

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Unlocking consultants' highest potential 

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Numerous states are undergoing BEAD challenge processes and the stakes for broadband offices to properly adjudicate couldn’t be higher.Virginia’s challenge process, which launched in November, has resulted in 266,000 challenges across 163,00 eligible locations.&nbsp;<a href="https://ready.net/broadband-leaders/how-dr-tamarah-holmes-plans-on-connecting-the-commonwealth-to-broadband" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dr. Tamarah Holmes,</a> Virginia’s <a href="https://ready.net/broadband-leaders/how-dr-tamarah-holmes-plans-on-connecting-the-commonwealth-to-broadband" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">broadband director,</a> says the review process is taking longer than initially anticipated as the process moves into the rebuttal phase.Louisiana was the first state to launch its challenge process in October 2023 and is currently awaiting results of the process.State broadband offices seeking a successful challenge process and, by extension, a smooth adjudication process should be sure take these three steps:&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/A_712eb4aaaf/A_712eb4aaaf.png"></figure><h2>Always be sure to limit the number of addresses per challenge</h2>States seeking the best results should be sure to adopt a “less is more” mindset. &nbsp;States should accept no more than 500 locations in a single challenge as a smaller amount of locations eliminates the risk of a bulk denial. It’s better to submit multiple challenges with a smaller number of locations than one single challenge with hundreds of locations.It’s important to incentivize stakeholders to group locations with one another logistically, such as by geographical proximity. Challenges should feature addresses within a 25 mile radius of one another and along county lines rather than 250 miles from each other and across five separate counties in different corners of the state.“It’s about striking the balance between the number of addresses in each challenge being as low as possible, but also avoiding too many challenges with too many addresses in smaller communities,” Earnie Holtrey, Ready's Director of State and Local Government Relationships and Indiana's former broadband director, said. “States are going to have to figure out the best way to strike this balance with their communities.”&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/B_acb2a0483f/B_acb2a0483f.png"></figure><h2>Be sure to ask for as much evidence and data as possible to make for a strong adjudication&nbsp;</h2>States possess enormous discretion (with NTIA approval) to establish a challenge process, per the BEAD NOFO. State broadband offices must utilize data and evidence to run a successful,&nbsp;<a href="https://ready.net/blog/data-driven-state-broadband-offices">data-driven broadband office</a> along with adjudicating challenges submitted through the challenge process.Additionally, the NOFO grants the ability for states to determine their geographic location of its choice for applicants. This means that some states will choose to utilize pre-defined locations while others will choose to allow applicants to define their project areas.“If the Eligible Entity allows prospective subgrantees to define proposed project areas, it must develop a mechanism for de-conflicting overlapping proposals (for example, by de-scoping some locations from a provider’s proposed project area) to allow for like-to-like comparison of competing proposals,” reads the BEAD NOFO. &nbsp;“Whatever process is selected, the Eligible Entity must ensure it has a plan for serving all unserved and (where it has sufficient funding) underserved locations.”The best way for states to take advantage of this flexibility is by &nbsp;utilizing an<a href="https://ready.net/products/challenge-process-coordinator"> easy-to-use platform</a> that fulfills each state’s individual requirements along with those set by BEAD and NTIA, but also avoids human error. The platform additionally should incorporate geospatial tools to ensure evidentiary standards are met and streamlines workflows.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/C_2d30c191f0/C_2d30c191f0.png"></figure><h2>Challenges that are strong make for an easy adjudication&nbsp;</h2>Prepare municipalities, non-profit organizations and elected officials to make their strongest challenges through effective&nbsp;<a href="https://ready.net/blog/a-fool-proof-recipe-for-stakeholder-engagement">stakeholder engagement</a>.This starts with explaining the challenge process to those who are eligible to submit challenges and helping to craft task forces to reach locations eligible for challenges. Connect Louisiana’s executive director Venneth Iyengar and Thomas Tyler, deputy director,&nbsp;<a href="https://ready.net/broadband-leaders/bayou-broadband">hosted a series of events across the Bayou State explaining the challenge process,</a> what constitutes a strong challenge and how to use the state’s custom platform built by Ready to submit a challenge. &nbsp;“It’s important to remember that your stakeholders aren’t anywhere near as informed about BEAD or the challenge process as the office which is in the driver’s seat,” Holtrey said. “States must fill in the gaps of this knowledge and clearly illustrate what’s a strong challenge.”&nbsp;

Learn what steps states must take when adjudicating Challenge Process Coordination challenges for BEAD grants.

There’s a lot at stake here – for both states and residents

States must ensure that challenge processes include three steps

Three must-dos for states adjudicating challenge processes

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Three steps states must take when adjudicating CPC challenges

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Well, it’s been a fascinating week in Washington, D.C. for the broadband industry! NTIA just released its Model Challenge Process Guidance for Initial Proposals. As you are aware, BEAD includes the requirement that each Eligible Entity submit an Initial Proposal describing, among other things, a “challenge process” under which a unit of local government, tribal government, nonprofit organization, or broadband service provider may challenge a determination made by the Eligible Entity in the Initial Proposal as to whether a particular location or community anchor institution is eligible for BEAD funds, including whether a particular location is unserved or underserved.NTIA sought feedback from the public and 61 stakeholders filed comments. See <a href="https://internetforall.gov/bead-challenge-process-policy">Internet for All </a>to access the Model Guidance and related documents.To prepare for your challenge, check out <a href="https://ready.net/products/challenge-process-coordinator">Ready’s Challenge Process Coordinator</a>, and be sure to stay tuned to <a href="https://ready.net" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ready.net</a> and <a href="https://broadband.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Broadband.io</a> for additional information.&nbsp;

Read the NTIA's newly released Model Challenge Process Guidance for Initial Proposals.

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NTIA Announces Updated BEAD Challenge Process Policy

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Years in the making, state broadband offices now know their allocation of America’s largest ever and possibly last major investment in broadband.

Congrats NTIA and State Broadband Offices – List of BEAD Grant Allocations

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Congrats NTIA and State Broadband Offices: List of BEAD Grant Allocations

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Congrats NTIA and State Broadband Offices - List of BEAD Grant Allocations

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<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Performance_Test_and_Survey_1_f8f7c02c99/Performance_Test_and_Survey_1_f8f7c02c99.svg?updated_at=2023-05-08T18:46:14.458Z" alt="Map Figure"></div><h2>State Broadband Offices: The NTIA provided crystal clarity in the Model Challenge Process. You can (and should) incorporate speed test data in order to avoid pitfalls in your BEAD implementation. Here’s how to do it effectively while meeting acceptable evidence requirements.</h2>NTIA’s excellent guidance makes it crystal clear: Unlike <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/fabric" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">FCC’s Fabric</a>, you can (and should) incorporate speed tests in your State’s BEAD <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/challenge-process" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Challenge Process</a>. You are encouraged to seek this critical form of evidence, as long as the data you gather meet acceptable evidence guidelines.Speed tests (or performance tests, as we like to call them) are your office’s best chance at getting objective ground truth about the broadband reality for locations and areas.How can you use performance tests in your office’s challenge process? There are two paths you can take:<ol><li>Embrace performance tests for validating service levels and challenges to help your office make defensible, objective decisions in your BEAD allocation.</li><li>Ignore performance tests for your validation (but please note that providers can still submit tests to you as evidence).</li></ol>Data-driven broadband offices will choose #1 – using performance tests to make better choices. The best broadband offices will go a step further and supply the tools that help Permissible Challengers generate NTIA-compliant acceptable evidence in performance tests generated in a simple-to-use, centralized portal.&nbsp;<h3>Why Should You Bother with Speed Tests?</h3>NTIA gave you a strong, thoughtful framework in which to develop and assert your own evidentiary standard. Why should you bother with speed tests? Because source-of-truth observational data like the kinds speed tests provide give you the best opportunity to validate provider claims of service. Gathering evidence around observed performance lets you shape a more objective view of where and to what extent you should focus your team’s efforts and BEAD resources. A well-executed evidence process can set your office up for the objectivity you’ll need to deliver generations of success.&nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/generations_and_legacy_5c4a17a52a/generations_and_legacy_5c4a17a52a.svg?updated_at=2023-05-08T16:17:51.857Z" alt="Generations and Legacy Figure"></div>Providers can use speed tests in rebuttals.&nbsp;You can use speed tests to build your understanding of broadband reality. You can specify that Permissible Challengers leverage your test.&nbsp;If you deploy your own, you’ll have a much better shot at achieving success with BEADHow will you get defensible, compliant evidence? The NTIA Model Challenge Process defines a clear but high bar for collecting source-of-truth (aka “citizen-sourced”) service quality evidence. It crystallizes what’s allowable and sets a specific standard for acceptable evidence.While NTIA provides crystal clear guidance on what counts as acceptable evidence, it’s up to your state how you go about obtaining it. It’s up to you to supply the tools and framework in which you collect data for your Challenge Process from Permissible Challengers.&nbsp; &nbsp;<h3>When Should Our State / Territory Gather Performance Test Data?&nbsp;</h3>If you decide to go the data-driven, proactive route for your BEAD implementation, in order to give your office the best chance at using performance data, it’s recommended that you get your Performance Test &amp; Survey set up right away.&nbsp;Within NTIA’s 10 phase challenge process, your office must include the following four step-by-step phases within its challenge process:<ol><li>Eligible locations published<ul><li>Include evaluation criteria, and registration process.</li><li>NTIA lets your office define its own “rigorous evidentiary review.”&nbsp;</li><li>While you can propose a deviation from NTIA’s guidelines, they might not approve the deviation, and they’ve already thought of everything you need to run an empirically defensible process. So it’s best to focus on making the most of your time and resources in facilitating the collection of acceptable evidence from Permissible Challengers.&nbsp;</li><li>Offer your office’s official challenge process with challenger login and testing framework.</li><li>Publish your Broadband Audits to show where your evidence suggests that service is underserved, unserved, or unavailable.</li></ul></li><li>Challenge phase<ul><li>You can proactively seek performance test data as validation of provider claims where you deem necessary, for example, for any provider submitting more than 1,000 challenges that do not match your broadband audit data.</li></ul></li><li>Rebuttal<ul><li>Avoid Wait &amp; See during this period. Use this time to get additional validation.</li><li>You can also set an expiration on challenges received if evidence isn’t submitted to reject .</li></ul></li><li>Final determination<ul><li>Incorporate performance tests and survey data gathered into your Challenge Process Coordinator.</li><li>Publish your sustained challenges and rejected challenges with reason code(s) to your public map and provider management system.</li></ul></li></ol>&nbsp;<h3>Who Can Submit Challenges?</h3>NTIA defines who can submit challenges to states, known as Permissible Challengers:<ul><li>Local governments including but not limited to counties, municipalities, regional organizations and councils of local governments Tribal governments – but bear in mind that you must follow <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/tribal-data-sovereignty" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Tribal Data Sovereignty</a> guidelines while cooperating with Tribal governments.</li><li>Providers with service in your state / territory.</li><li>Note that providers can submit their own tests in rebuttal, but that such submissions need to meet acceptable evidence standards, and must demonstrate at least 80% of target upload and download speeds.</li><li>Non-profit organizations such as state-specific associations (for instance MERIT Network), or national allies such as Superhighway EDU, National Digital Inclusion Alliance, Connect Humanity, and more.</li></ul>At this time, individuals may not submit challenges directly, but states can work with on-the-ground partners using permission-based tools in order to ensure efficient, centralized aggregation of submissions.The rest of this quick post outlines how your state’s office can meet NTIA’s higher bar for acceptable evidence, along with a few tips for making the most of your state’s evidence discovery process without needing to hire an Army.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>Get Defensible, Transparent, NTIA-Compliant Speed Tests</h2><h3>1. You Need More than a Map</h3>Your map is an important tool, but you need much more than a map in order to make effective use of speed tests.&nbsp;In addition to your map, your published challenge process site should include:<ul><li>Guidelines that clearly explain your evidentiary standard.</li><li>A way for Permissible Challengers to register with your office.</li><li>Your broadband audits showing Community Anchor Institutions, last known service level, and more.</li><li>Your office’s official testing tool, for Permissible Challengers to utilize.</li></ul><div class="raw-html-embed"><figure>
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<figcaption>Ready Performance Test &amp; Survey includes three tests in one, plus configurable survey. 100% customized to your identity, 100% compliant with NTIA acceptable evidence guidelines.</figcaption>
</figure></div><h3>2. Require Permissible Challengers to register with your office</h3>Provide a secure login for your Permissible Challengers (local govs, Tribal govs, non-profits, and providers). This way, your team has a structured relationship with potential challengers and applicants from the outset, giving you the ability to validate and approve Permissible Challengers in an orderly, equitable way.Through your Challenge Process Coordinator you can run an efficient, centralized process that produces NTIA-compliant acceptable evidence as the default – dramatically reducing your time and energy spent collating data through email attachments, freeing you up to think strategically and provide extra coverage to small, local &amp; <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/non-traditional-broadband-provider" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">non-traditional providers</a>.The best systems let the entity seamlessly roll over into grant applications without separate credentials.&nbsp;Make sure your system rigorously secures any evidence gathered.&nbsp;Off-the-shelf sales force systems will not provide the specific workflows you’ll need to coordinate among challengers.&nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"><video controls="" autoplay="" muted="">
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<figcaption>Challenge Process Coordinator lets you sustain challenges, request more evidence, set expirations on unsubstantiated claims, and lets you coordinate messaging from a single system rather than a chaotic process across dozens of communications channels.</figcaption>
</figure></div><h3>3. Supply your performance test &amp; survey for Permissible Challengers</h3>Your office will realistically receive more than 100,000 challenges from dozens of challengers. Some offices will receive 1,000,000 challenges from hundreds of challengers.&nbsp;While Permissible Challengers can supply their own testing infrastructure, making your own official, recommended Performance Test &amp; Survey available to Permissible Challengers with clear usage brings many key advantages to your office:&nbsp;<ul><li>Ensures the highest quality, NTIA-compliant data is generated.</li><li>Avoids wasting everyone’s time and energy with fragmented tests, non-acceptable evidence, and messy back and forth.&nbsp;</li><li>Makes it easy to coordinate with Tribes while respecting Tribal Data Sovereignty.</li><li>Removes the barrier to submitting compliant evidence: It will be difficult for small, local and non-traditional providers to build their own compliant tests since no off-the-shelf-tests meet NTIA’s acceptable evidence criteria.</li></ul><h3>4. Be Inclusive:&nbsp;</h3>Making your challenge process inclusive helps you empower small, local &amp; non-traditional providers while avoiding unnecessary lawsuits and process delays. At a minimum, your Performance Test &amp; Survey and Challenge Process Coordinator should:<ul><li>Meet Section 508 Accessibility Guidelines.</li><li>Include SMS &amp; voice options for those without internet.</li><li>Work with Tribal govs to ensure participation while respecting Tribal Data Sovereignty.</li></ul><h3>5. Go on the Offensive / Outbound FTW</h3>Since you only get one chance to validate your broadband audit and any provider rebuttals, you might as well take the opportunity to verify service quality in areas you know or suspect to be historically underserved.Consider reaching out to occupants of BSLs in historically underserved areas if challengers have submitted large quantities of challenges. The “trust but verify” principle would mean using the set of Broadband Serviceable Locations contained in of challenges from all challengers who submitted more than 1,000 disputed challenges as your outbound mailing list.&nbsp;This effort will take a little printing budget and team effort but can pay of in dividends for your office since:<ul><li>Build it and they will come is not an effective strategy – distribution is required to get results.</li><li>As a gov entity you can send out mailers at &nbsp;rate and special print costs, for sub 10 cents apiece.</li><li>For a relatively small amount of money you can dramatically increase the resolution of your understanding of not only service availability but also affordability, quality of experience, and more.&nbsp;</li></ul><div class="raw-html-embed"><figure>
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<figcaption>Build your office’s outbound campaign. Include snail mail to BSL occupants in historically marginalized areas.</figcaption>
</figure></div><h3>6. Off the shelf solutions won’t work: you’ll need to buy or build</h3>Read NTIA’s challenge process guidance and Model Challenge Process carefully. Acceptable evidence has a high bar. You are encouraged to develop your office’s evidentiary standard on the minimums supplied by NTIA. You should:<ul><li>Use more than one speed test. Two is better than one, but Performance Test &amp; Survey includes three complete tests.&nbsp;</li><li>While no single test is perfect, running multiple tests together in one shot combined with survey data can help you to build up your understanding in an empirically defensible way.</li><li>However, taking two speed tests can be a challenge for BSL occupants, so the experience should be designed to fire the tests in serial (as running tests in parallel can produce false positives).&nbsp;</li><li>Geolocate results to the survey / test submitter.&nbsp;</li><li>But you’ll need to comply with Tribal Data Sovereignty for results gathered from Tribal stakeholders.&nbsp;</li><li>Include timestamps on tests taken in order to ensure provider rebuttals aren’t only run during extreme off-peak hours.</li></ul>For best results, remind test takers to take tests at specific on-peak hours, and get a time series (more than one test at different times) from BSL occupants in hotly contested areas. &nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"><figure>
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<figcaption>From acceptable evidence gathering to one-click export in acceptable data format, Performance Test &amp; Survey keeps your office compliant. The system also includes a comprehensive, configurable survey in order to fortify the evidence you collect.</figcaption>
</figure></div><h3>7. Go beyond up &amp; down – set your bar high</h3>In the theme of viewing NTIA’s guidance as minimum requirements, it’s Important to remember they do set out a basic <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/latency" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">latency</a> threshold of not-to-exceed 100ms round trip.While BEAD uses upload and download, you are encouraged to incorporate other attributes into your evaluation process. You might as well gather other dimensions as wellIdeally your tests go deeper than general latency.Read the <a href="https://www.bitag.org/documents/BITAG_latency_explained.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">BITAG Latency Explained</a> report for a deeper understanding of why buffer-bloat &nbsp;(“working latency”) should be measured in your office’s performance diagnostics.&nbsp;<h3>8. View Permissible Challengers and Anchors as Partners</h3>While <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/community-anchor-institution" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs)</a> were ignored in FCC’s Fabric, NTIA’s guidance makes abundantly clear that CAIs are very much at the table in BEAD. Your office can go beyond ensuring your CAIs have gigabit symmetrical service and empower them to help you engage BSL occupants in generating meaningful performance test &amp; survey data.By supplying your Performance Test &amp; Survey as part of your Challenge Process Coordinator, you empower your Permissible Challengers including counties, Tribal governments, regional groups, providers, and non-profits to help your team to make objective, data-driven decisions.If you’re required to identify CAIs, you might as well provide them with your Performance Test &amp; Survey tools and treat them as partners in collecting meaningful source-of-truth data. Performance Test &amp; Survey was developed to follow the <a href="https://broadband.money/lessons/recommendations-for-browser-based-speed-test-surveys" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Broadband Mapping Coalition’s recommended methodology</a> for broadband performance testing. States should consult the BMC recommended methodology if implementing their own performance testing systems.Please remember you’re required to identify CAIs, including CAIs on Tribal Lands as well. When working with Tribes, please ensure your office adheres to Tribal Data Sovereignty. For help engaging Tribes in a compliant way, please ping Tribal Ready.In addition to CAIs, Permissible Challengers including local gov, Tribal gov, non-profits and providers can be major allies in driving adoption of your data-driven efforts – if you provide them the bridge between your office and their efforts.&nbsp;<h2>What's next?</h2>NTIA’s provided crystal clarity: you can and should incorporate performance data into your Challenge Process. It’s up to you how you get there. Whether you build your own technology from scratch or license the Ready State Grantor Platform, you can, should, and must figure out how to incorporate source-of-truth evidence in your challenge process in order to make the most of your BEAD resources. It’s the best way for you to get to the bottom of where service really is needed.

Get the source-of-truth data you need in order to make the most of your BEAD while meeting NTIA acceptable evidence guidelines.

Get the source-of-truth data you need in order to make the most of your BEAD while meeting NTIA acceptable evidence guidelines

The State Broadband Office’s Guide to Speedtests for Challenge Process

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Get Great Speed Test Data for Your Challenge Process

Get Defensible, Transparent, NTIA-Compliant Speed Tests

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</div><h2>How to encourage competition, support diverse participation, and avoid lawsuits in your state’s BEAD grant program.</h2>Over the course of the next five years, all of the states, territories and Native American tribes of the U.S., are preparing to receive and distribute a historic, unprecedented package of $42.45 billion in collective funding for broadband internet expansion projects that help close the “digital divide” within their borders.But as they move through this process, the states will need to demonstrate to the federal government that they are not just giving the money to the “usual suspects” — large monopoly cable providers, internet service providers (ISPs) and traditional telecoms we are all familiar with — not without considering other, smaller, more local and independent, or nontraditional, alternatives as well.That’s because this money state &nbsp;and territories are eligible for comes with some important strings attached: <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/broadband-equity-access-and-deployment-program" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Broadband Equity, Access And Deployment Program (BEAD)</a>, administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) as part of the $1 trillion Infrastructure Act passed in 2021. States, territories, and tribal governments can in some cases also use funding from the <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/capital-projects-program" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">American Rescue Plan Act’s Capital Projects Fund</a> to build out broadband projects, and combine these funds with their BEAD dollars. (States, territories and tribes will be used interchangeably from now on in this article.)BEAD is the largest investment in broadband infrastructure and digital equity in our nation’s history, and it was created expressly to provide broadband connectivity to currently <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/unserved-location" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">unserved</a> (lacking internet service at speeds of 25 megabits-per-second download/3 mbps for upload) and <a href="https://broadband.money/broadband-grant-terms/underserved-location" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">underserved</a> (lacking speeds of 100 mbps download/20 mbps upload) locations. It was also created to ensure that “community anchor institutions” receive gigabit broadband service. &nbsp;“Community anchor institutions are defined by the NTIA as entities “such as a school, library, health clinic, health center, hospital or other medical provider, public safety entity, institution of higher education, public housing organization, or community support organization that facilitates greater use of broadband service by vulnerable populations, including, but not limited to, low-income individuals, unemployed individuals, children, the incarcerated, and aged individuals.”<h2>Who must states include when allocating BEAD and other broadband funding?</h2>&nbsp;NTIA’s FAQ says that states “may not exclude cooperatives, nonprofit organizations, public-private partnerships, private companies, public or private utilities, public utility districts, or local governments” from being considered for BEAD funding as the states move to issue it to subgrantees who will actually build out the network infrastructure and services for potential customers within each state’s borders.In other words, states are left with a multi-tier goal: get fast broadband service offerings to individuals and communities that lack such services , but do so in a way that is inclusive and accounts for the opinions and experiences of specific underrepresented groups, while also being sure to consider the needs of smaller providers to accomplish this goal.Based on these goals and requirements, it is clear that state broadband offices face enormous coordination and communication challenges. States need to manage and interface with a wide and numerous array of stakeholders as they go about deciding how to distribute their BEAD (and Digital Equity) grant funds.<h2>Who are the small, local, and non-traditional providers?</h2>Looking at the number of smaller ISPs that could be potential BEAD award recipients, there are actually quite a few for state broadband offices to choose from: in total, there are at least 2,201 ISPs in the U.S. that offer residential internet service at speeds of at least 200 kbps in at least one direction, according to a recent report by <a href="https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-22-103A1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)</a>.<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Applicant_Mgmt_interface_ecfd94225d/Applicant_Mgmt_interface_ecfd94225d.svg?updated_at=2023-04-24T21:06:29.128Z" alt="Applicant Interface Figure">
</div>Only 11 of these ISPs offer internet service to areas encompassing 5% or more of the total U.S. population, according to <a href="https://www.telecompetitor.com/fcc-finds-11-isps-that-cover-5-or-more-of-the-u-s-population-number-11-is-a-surprise/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Telecompetitor</a>. That means the remaining 2,190 ISPs offer smaller service area footprints, and therefore are likely to be smaller regional companies, utilities, cooperatives, utilities, nonprofits, municipal networks, and other entities that the states should consider when reviewing BEAD subgrant applications.&nbsp;These smaller ISPs are found across the entire country and go by many names and use many different organizational structures. New York City, for example, is home to the volunteer-run <a href="https://www.nycmesh.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">NYC Mesh</a>. In addition to gas and power service, the Ohio-based utility <a href="https://www.consolidated.coop/fiber-service-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Consolidated Cooperative</a> offers internet service to customers in the Midwest. In Oregon, the cities of Monmouth and Independence joined forces to launch <a href="https://www.minetfiber.com/about_us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">MINET</a>, “a fiber-to-the-home provider of internet and voice services.”Clearly, there are plenty of existing small and local internet service providers that have demonstrated the ability to build out the infrastructure and possess the organization, knowledge and expertise necessary to connect customers, even in the shadows of more well-funded and better-resourced larger ISPs.On the surface, these facts seem excellent for states looking to hand out BEAD money, as it means there are many smaller providers to evaluate as potential subgrantee award recipients.However, the sheer abundance of these smaller providers actually makes it tough for states to identify and include them in their BEAD subgrantee process.There are fundamental questions that each broadband office must address — How can and should state broadband offices identify the smaller ISPs, reach out to them, and make them aware of the BEAD funding opportunity? How to get them to submit an application to the state broadband office in accordance with the state’s deadlines, timelines, and processes? And how to ensure that these providers comply with all of the state’s and federal government’s numerous regulatory and compliance requirements for BEAD funding?States will undoubtedly find it challenging to connect with, keep track of, and keep smaller providers informed, updated, appraised, and included in their BEAD and other broadband funding opportunities, especially when these smaller providers may not all use the same communications channels — yet states cannot afford to leave them out of their process, or risk the ire of NTIA or ineffectiveness of the BEAD programA state that only included large telcos/cable giants/ISPs in its list of subgrantee award applicants to the NTIA would likely be viewed as exclusionary and anti-competitive.<h2>How states need to document their coordination</h2>The NTIA further wants a state’s broadband office or other similar entity in charge of distributing the funds to document all local coordination and outreach activities by providing a detailed description of its efforts to engage local governments, community groups, underrepresented population as part of the state’s requisite Five-Year Action Plan and continue throughout the entirety of the program, including the state’s Initial Proposal and Final Proposal.<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Pyramid_c446ec9789/Pyramid_c446ec9789.svg?updated_at=2023-04-24T21:06:28.719Z" alt="Pyramid Figure">
</div>Throughout it all, NTIA will be evaluating states to see how transparently and effectively they are coordinating and collaborating with these local stakeholders.Clearly, building a process that only includes large telecom companies will not fly if a state wants to remain compliant, and receive and deploy its funds without risking running afoul of the federal government requirements.Historically, large cable companies, telecom giants, and major internet service providers have failed to deliver results when given broadband grants, as <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/in-depth/news/2021/07/14/weve-spent-billions-provide-broadband-rural-areas-what-failed-wisconsin/7145014002/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">newspapers have reported</a>. Smaller, non-traditional, and local providers bring variety, innovation, and a willingness to get the job done.Yet working with small, local and non-traditional providers can be a real challenge without a data-centric platform. States will need to get very good at outreach and provider relationship management very quickly.<h2>What states should do to make sure smaller, local, non-traditional providers are included and addressed in the process?&nbsp;</h2>The Ready Grantor Platform from Ready.net is a secure, one-stop-shop web application that helps states ensure that they reach small, local, non-traditional providers.&nbsp;By directing smaller non-traditional ISPs and local groups to a state’s Ready Grantor Platform, states can ensure these smaller entities will have a chance to participate in the BEAD allocation process.That’s because the Ready Grantor Platform includes easy-to-use interfaces, clear standards, application guidance, direct messaging and tools for connecting the state broadband office with any of its authorized intermediaries, stakeholders or potential BEAD applicants — and vice versa.&nbsp;Applicants can see exactly how their proposed projects align with state objectives and scoring criteria. Applicants and states can utilize Ready’s underlying geospatial data sets to make informed choices, for instance, socio-demographic information.It delivers expert knowledge to applicants when and where it’s needed most – in the application portal and throughout the application process. Applicants will be able to follow along in real-time as they prepare, submit, receive feedback or questions on, and ultimately learn the fate of their application.&nbsp;Applicants can use the Ready Grantor Portal to connect with the grantor, submit challenges, apply for grants, and manage their grant reporting.Thanks to the clear interface and easy built-in communications tools between the state broadband office and applicants, both parties can stay in constant contact.Applicants can see how well their project plans align with the state’s priority broadband objectives, and can make adjustments necessary to secure their fair share of the grant funding needed to connect their communities.For states, Ready Grantor makes it easy to manage the influx ofBEAD subgrant applications from a diverse pool, performing an “apples to apples” comparison of them, objectively evaluating hundreds or thousands of applicants efficiently and equitably.It is 100% customizable to a state’s vision, guidelines and identity for its BEAD funding. It follows the NTIA’s relevant and applicable guidelines, and allows states to get and stay on the same page with their stakeholders.&nbsp;With tools including built-in messaging and the <a href="http://broadband.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Broadband.io Community</a> channels and support for processes ranging from Applicant Experience to Local Coordination and Letters of Community Support, the Ready Grantor Platform makes it easy for states to engage in direct communication with applicants and stakeholders — one on one, one to many, many to one, and all permutations that a state and applicant may need.&nbsp;States can also hold recurring Office Hours with prospective applicants. States that leverage this technology will do a better job engaging applicants more inclusively.&nbsp;Little wonder the states that are already using Ready Grantor Platform, like Mississippi, have rave reviews for it: “Ready is such an asset for BEAM (Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi),” says Sally Doty, Mississippi’s broadband director. “We work closely with their team on a daily basis and continue to be impressed with the tools customized for our State. Their team is responsive and provides an innovative platform for the entire grant process.”<div class="raw-html-embed"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gqiUVQPDOYw" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; web-share" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div><h2>Get the most from your resources</h2>Make sure skilled, capable providers of all sizes have what they need to apply for your state’s BEAD funds.The Ready Grantor Platform is a comprehensive solution that offers built-in strength tests, mapping, speedtest and socioeconomic data layers, geospatial information from the U.S. Census and multiple additional sources, organized tab views, private and public messaging, and more.It provides a fully guided grant journey customized to small business owner requirements. The platform has a state-specific scoring algorithm that ranks applications based on their suitability. It also allows for seamless communication with grant applicants. The platform offers scalable local coordination, including chat support, user forums, and DMs with applicants. It is an all-in-one solution and platform that simplifies the entire grant process for BEAD.Use it for your state broadband office now.

Make sure skilled, capable providers of all sizes have what they need to apply for your state’s BEAD funds.

Get Ready to Work with Small, Local, and Non-traditional Providers

Building a Legacy of Success

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Building a Fair and Inclusive Process

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</div><h2>Boost productivity without busting your budget</h2>All of the states, territories, and Native American tribes that comprise the United States have been given a historic, once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand and improve internet service within their borders. It's the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program (BEAD). &nbsp;BEAD represents $42.45 billion in grant funding from the $1 trillion Infrastructure bill that is being administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). BEAD is designed to fund broadband infrastructure projects that seek to connect locations that are presently unserved (lacking internet service at speeds of 25 megabits-per-second download/3 mbps for upload) and underserved (lacking speeds of 100 mbps download/20 mbps upload).The NTIA has already made its initial planning funding allocations to the broadband offices of states, territories and tribes (referred to collectively as “states” hereafter), and will announce additional funding allocations throughout the remainder of 2023 — great news for internet service providers (ISPs) and cooperatives seeking to build out broadband infrastructure, and especially their potential customers. &nbsp;However, securing funding is only the first step. An incredibly complex, multi-stage, and highly-regulated process lies ahead for state broadband offices motivated to take advantage of this opportunity to improve the availability of the most critical infrastructure of the 21st century for their residents.&nbsp;Now, with small staffs, broadband offices must continue along the process and tackle four other major ongoing work areas:<ol><li>coordinate with hundreds or thousands of communities and local organizations,&nbsp;</li><li>run an open, effective, and compliant challenge process&nbsp;</li><li>evaluate grant applications for sub grantees</li><li>establish reliable, and compliant, reporting systems and tools</li></ol>What if there was a platform that allowed state broadband offices to complete all of these four work areas securely, efficiently, effectively, and easily — without breaking their limited budgets? The good news is, such a platform exists. Read on to learn more about all the tasks and how they can be completed.<h2>Coordination with hundreds of local stakeholders</h2>As part of the funding requirements, each state, territory, and the District of Columbia must submit a five-year action plan to NTIA that outlines how they will use the funds to achieve the program goals. The plan must address 13 additional requirements, including a needs assessment, a stakeholder engagement strategy, a workforce development plan, a broadband mapping plan, and a performance measurement plan.It must be informed by collaboration with local and regional entities, such as municipalities, counties, tribes, nonprofits, and broadband providers. Developing a comprehensive and realistic plan that meets all the requirements and reflects the diverse needs and interests of the stakeholders is a complex and time-consuming task that requires coordination and expertise.Another place where local coordination is important: securing matching funds. A 25% match is required to use all the BEAD program funds. However, some states and territories may face difficulties in raising matching funds from their own budgets and resources. The BEAD program allows matching funds from federal regional commissions and authorities, or from other federal funds that were provided for broadband deployment under previous legislation. Still, government broadband offices must explore alternative ways to secure matching funds, such as public-private partnerships, bonds, or taxes.But how are you supposed to keep track of all these stakeholders and coordinate between them? If a state broadband office is using a bunch of different tools, they’re likely to become quickly overwhelmed, disorganized, and confused. What’s needed is an all-in-one solution.<h2>Running an open, effective, and compliant challenge process</h2>Both BEAD and the separate but related federal Recovery Act Capital Projects Fund (CPF) require states to administer a process by which local residents and organizations can challenge the state’s official broadband service map in order to prevent duplication of efforts and to ensure projects are prioritized in accordance with federal eligibility requirements.Specifically, the NTIA requires all eligible entities to design and conduct their own “transparent, evidence-based, and expeditious” challenge processes separately, before allocating their BEAD funds to subgrantees. The exact timeline for the broadband challenge process will vary depending on when the state filed its initial proposal and when NTIA approves or disapproves it.First, the state must publicly publish its initial broadband grant proposal and its proposed list of unserved and underserved locations on its website and notify potential challengers of the opportunity to submit challenges. The state will need to launch its public challenge process including clear criteria and procedures for accepting, reviewing, and resolving challenges, and allow 60 days for potential challengers to submit.The state must consider all timely, valid challenges and update its initial proposal with a list of unserved and underserved locations accordingly. The state must then submit its updated initial proposal with identified unserved and underserved locations to NTIA - along with a summary of the challenges received and how they were resolved.The NTIA will review the updated initial proposal and the list of unserved and underserved locations and may request additional information or clarification from the state, which the state broadband office is expected to be in a position to provide. Finally, the NTIA will approve or disapprove the updated initial proposal and the list of unserved and underserved locations based on the program requirements and standards.What information may a state consider from challengers? According to the NTIA, the state broadband office “may decide to accept a broader range of information that may bear on broadband service in an area than is considered in an FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) challenge.” In other words, more information than just speed and latency.The challenge process ensures that the allocation of BEAD program funds addresses the most critical broadband gaps in each state and avoids duplicating or overbuilding existing broadband networks. It also provides an opportunity for local stakeholders to participate in broadband planning and decision-making.Running the challenge process is a major operation for state broadband offices unto itself: How should states invite and keep track of all challenges and who made them? How can they view, analyze and approve or disapprove of them — using what tools, software, or applications? And how will the state broadband office ensure the security, reliability, and compliance of the challenge process with state and federal guidelines? What’s needed is a platform that is tailor-made for running a challenge process with limited staff, resources, and budget, yet optimizes both openness and security for participants.&nbsp;<h2>Evaluating grant applications from subgrantees&nbsp;</h2>Once a state has run its challenge process, it needs to take the final step toward actioning its broadband funds: deciding who is awarded the money.This involves evaluating applications from potential subgrantee recipients based on how they are best equipped to deploy the funds and responsibly connect the state’s unserved and underserved locations to high-quality, affordable broadband services.<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Feasibility_Documents_91de45f41a/Feasibility_Documents_91de45f41a.svg?updated_at=2023-04-18T18:17:38.332Z" alt="Feasibility Documents">
</div>To do this, states must consider:&nbsp;<ul><li>how potential subgrantees align with the state’s five-year action plan</li><li>feasibility and sustainability of proposed broadband infrastructure projects</li><li>expected outcomes and impacts</li><li>cost-effectiveness and efficiency</li><li>compliance with program rules and standards, including the Fair Labor Standards Act,</li><li>contribution to advancing broadband equity, access, and deployment in the state The state broadband office must also ensure that subgrantees meet the eligibility requirements for receiving BEAD funds.</li></ul>Again, the question for states becomes, “how do we keep track of all these subgrantee applications and the data contained therein in a secure, easily accessible, and useful way? Spreadsheets and manual data entry won’t cut it with the sheer volume of subgrantee applicants and cross referencing a state will need to do.&nbsp;<h2>Establishing reporting and compliance tools and processes</h2>Throughout the BEAD Program, NTIA will conduct ongoing monitoring of each state’s progress against its plans and ensure that the requirements of the BEAD program and larger Infrastructure bill are met. States will also be required to comply with reporting requirements and monitor their subgrantees — a lot to place on understaffed and overworked offices.Among these reporting requirements are an initial report the state must submit to NTIA within 90 days of receiving its BEAD funds. This report should cover how a state intends to use the funds and how those uses comply with the BEAD goals of connecting underserved and unserved locations and ultimately, the entire country to broadband.States must also submit semi-annual reports to the NTIA, beginning a year after receiving grant funds and continuing till all the funds have been distributed to subgrantees. These semi-annual reports must describe how states are using the funds, the services being provided by them, and the number of locations where broadband service is being made available as a result. States will also need to certify that they are complying with the reporting requirements and any additional ones from the NTIA’s Assistant Secretary.Subgrantees must submit their own reports to the state at least twice a year, proving effective utilization of the funds they received and describing the progress and purpose of every project they carried out with them; as well as any additional requirements the state decides to impose on them. These subgrantee reports must include a list of service locations, the percentage of customers using the service, and the type of facility being constructed and the speed of the broadband service being offered.It’s the state’s responsibility to corral these reports and ultimately ensure funds are properly used by subgrantees. That’s another big item on the state broadband office’s long to-do list.<h2>There’s a lot to do. So how can states do it all effectively and securely?&nbsp;</h2>Clearly, states are about to be slammed with work to comply with BEAD. Yet many face hiring caps and limited budgets.BEAD is the largest broadband program in history, with hundreds of moving parts. But, on average, state broadband offices are staffed with teams of five (5) people. Hiring outside consultants can help. But consultants alone can’t entirely address the challenge as they are typically are limited in the total workload they can take on and time they can devote to a particular projectThere are two possible paths for states to walk: succumb to the workload without doing anything to empower themselves and deliver mediocrity (or worse); or, rise to the challenge and get ready with a digital platform that helps their office’s team do the most possible good with granted funds. This program only happens once, and when the money's gone — it’s gone for good — making it all the more imperative for states get their plans and implementations correct on the first try.Thankfully, there is a turnkey, easy-to-use, flexible and fully customizable solution for states: the Ready Grantor Platform from Ready.net, offering full lifecycle support for every step of their journey. Using this secure, web-based application that is 100% compliant with NTIA and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) guidelines, states have access to a single platform to achieve their broadband vision. Using it, teams can automate many routine tasks and focus on more important decision making, selections and allocations.Save time, empower your team, follow along with the journey of your grant awardees with integrated reporting, and get the results you need to distribute BEAD funding effectively and in compliance with regulations.&nbsp;

Use tools to solve Local Coordination, Challenge Process, Grant Applications, and more.

Use tools to solve Local Coordination, Challenge Process, Grant Applications, and More

State Broadband Offices Use Tech to Do More with Less

Force-multiply your team without hiring an army

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Scaling You: How Your State Broadband Office Can Use Tech to Do More with Less

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</div><h2>Achieve Your Vision for BEAD &amp; Beyond</h2>How will your state broadband office make the most of the largest investment in broadband funding in a generation?That’s the question facing states, territories, and Native American tribal governments (used interchangeably in this article from here on out) as the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) prepares to distribute $42.45 billion in broadband grant funding through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program for unserved and underserved communities.States face an overwhelming amount of information with a tight deadline. The NTIA’s announcement of initial allocation funds is scheduled by June 30, 2023 and initial proposal submissions are due 180 days afterward. There's a lot of pressure to build a defensible plan for how to direct their broadband funding in compliance with the NTIA guidelines.Ready Grant Optimizer from Ready.net is a next-generation solution to a very hard problem set states face. Ready Grant Optimizer puts you in control of your state’s criteria selection based on the priorities set by NTIA and allows you to uncover key insights.&nbsp;<h2>The Competitive Grant and Subgrantee Process, Explained</h2>Once states get their initial funding allocations from the NTIA, they are hardly finished with their tasks. In fact, in many ways, the hard work is just getting started: states must choose the final recipients of the funding — the organizations that will actually get the money to build out broadband — according to specific criteria from the NTIA outlined on <a href="https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/BEAD-Frequently-Asked-Questions-%28FAQs%29_Version-2.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">pages 46-48 of this document</a> and the <a href="https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/Subgrantee_Selection_Primer_A_Guide_for_Eligible_Entities.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">entirety of this document</a>.Among the mandated criteria are that the initial 20% of grant funding a state receives must be distributed to areas “consisting of at least 80% unserved locations” and “in locations in which the percentage of individuals with a household income at or below 150% of the poverty line applicable to a family of the size involved.”After that, it’s up to the states to decide which “subgrantees,” or grant recipients, get the remaining funds through a “fair, open, and competitive” application process that the state broadband office or other state-level government agency is in charge of organizing, hosting, running and maintaining.Think about the popular singing contests on TV — The Voice, American Idol, and The Masked Singer — where judges must whittle down the best of a whole large group of qualified singers. Now multiply that by thousands or tens of thousands, and you have some idea of the challenge facing state broadband offices, who do not have nearly as many staffers or employees as a popular TV series. The state broadband subgrantee competition is a lot like this, except with internet service providers (ISPs) large and small instead of singers.In this case, those ISPs may be non-traditional providers such as cooperatives and nonprofits, &nbsp;or even private companies.The state will need to collect a range of information from them, including the organization name, the applicant, the origin, the status of the application, the date on which they applied, the amount of funding they are seeking, how much match funding they are bringing to the table (if any), and arguably most importantly, the actual service area they plan to build in. Among the documents that the state can collect are audited financial statements of publicly traded parent companies. And, state broadband offices must evaluate grant applicants’ compliance with fair labor practices.Also, the states must describe the process in an initial proposal and final proposal documents filed to the NTIA, prioritizing unserved areas and ensuring coverage when all is said and done and the funds are all allocated.Therefore, in order to effectively use its funding allocation in compliance with the NTIA and other federal reporting mandates, sate broadband offices must identify the many different locations in a state that are eligible for broadband funding — be it the unserved or underserved — and compare this to the subgrantee applications to find out which subgrantees will get the job done of connecting these areas.It’s a difficult, demanding, highly detailed task that is very tough for states to even begin to approach, let alone get right. Fortunately, there is a solution from Ready.net: the Ready Grant Optimizer, part of Ready.net’s Grant Application Management Engine.Using this and other Ready tools, states can deploy enterprise BOSS (Back Office Secret Sauce - a full business support system/operating support system) to help states manage their relationship with grant-seeking applicants directly through a simple, clean, powerful, easy-to-use cloud-based tool.<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Pyramid_1_9f05953271/Pyramid_1_9f05953271.svg?updated_at=2023-04-10T18:21:40.304Z" alt="Pyramid Figure">
</div><h2>What is The Ready Grant Optimizer?&nbsp;</h2>The Ready Grant Optimizer is a helpful tool that offers a one-stop-shop solution for not only managing your state’s subgrantee selection process, but is also part of the larger suite of tools Ready.net offers that together will enable your office to implement and manage your state’s entire comprehensive broadband plan, start-to-finish.In particular, the Ready Grant Optimizer allows you to model target areas of broadband grants investment dollars with precision using dozens of data sets.This tool follows both NTIA and FCC guidelines and is 100% compliant, but it is also configurable to your state’s policies and goals when it comes to broadband funding allocations.By using the Ready Grant Optimizer, you can eliminate guesswork and politics and set the stage for objective management and evaluation of grant application submissions. Based on an algorithm that unifies the complex data needed to make subgrantee awards, the Ready Grant Optimizer enables state broadband offices the ability to easily share, validate, and defend their decisions.<div class="raw-html-embed"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/u3pKFXRY60o" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div><h2>How the Ready Grant Optimizer Helps You Manage Subgrantees</h2>You can view all of your grant applicants and applications in a single table view, click into each one to find out more information such as their organization, applicant name, where they filed the application, the status of their application, when they applied, the area they plan to serve, and much more. Then, you can cross reference this information with your state’s broadband service map on Ready.net’s mapping and data collection platform, which includes comprehensive speed test and demographic information, ensuring that you are evaluating the grant applicant with all of the information and context you need to make a decision to approve or deny their funding application.It’s a built-from-scratch solution specifically designed and customized for state broadband offices to be able to run their entire grant application process from one fast, secure, easy-to-use tool. No matter the size of your broadband office staff and the mountain of demands facing you, the Ready Grant Optimizer can make your life easier.This tool will help you publish your criteria and target maps with confidence, so you can unlock insights and achieve unparalleled visibility into the anatomy of plans that connect the most people to affordable, quality broadband.The Ready Grant Optimizer offers Geospatial visualizations of potential project areas in your state, empowering you to identify, prioritize, and rank areas tailored to your state's vision to address broadband needs.<h2>Remove Uncertainty and Indecision — Use Ready Grant Organizer to Manage Your Entire Broadband Subgrantee Allocation Process</h2>It can be easy to get stuck in analysis paralysis when it comes to broadband allocation. However, with the help of the Ready Grant Optimizer, you can overcome this challenge and surface your priorities. Don't leave it to chance - set your criteria and follow your state's guidelines and the federal guidelines to spotlight where best to focus. By using this tool, you can set yourself up for success and ensure that your broadband allocation will be effective and efficient.

Optimize your broadband grant resources with objective, transparent decision-making tools.

Optimize your broadband grant resources with objective, transparent decision-making tools 

Optimizing Your State’s BEAD Allocation

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Get The Most from Your Broadband Grant Resources

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</div><h2>Practical Advice for Running an Efficient, Equitable, Data-driven Broadband Grant Challenge Process.</h2>As state broadband offices move to distribute grant money for broadband projects from the $42.45 billion federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, the Recovery Act Capital Projects Fund, and other state moneys throughout their states, deciding which locations to prioritize can be extremely challenging.Combined, the funding sources offer what’s expected to be the largest investment in broadband infrastructure across the United States and its territories in a generation — possibly longer — so getting the funding allocations right is imperative for states.Viewing, evaluating, and approving or disapproving public challenges to a state’s broadband Fabric presents a major logistical issue for state broadband offices. How to keep track of all the many challenges, view, analyze and approve or disapprove of them? How to determine which communities are in areas of highest need and direct the appropriate funding to them? It sounds like a complicated and herculean task, and it is, but there is a simple, elegant, and helpful solution for state broad offices to use starting now: The <a href="https://ready.net/products/challenge-process-coordinator" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Challenge Process Coordinator</a> from Ready.net. Read more about the challenge process and how the Challenge Process Coordinator helps streamline it for broadband state offices/officials/teams below:<h2>Understand the BEAD Broadband Challenge Process: How to Get It Right</h2>According to the <a href="https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/BEAD-Frequently-Asked-Questions-%28FAQs%29_Version-2.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)</a>, “Any State of the U.S., the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are considered “eligible entities” under the BEAD program and may apply for funding.But the NTIA requires all eligible entities to design and conduct their own “transparent, evidence-based, and expeditious” challenge processes separately, before allocating their BEAD subgrant funds. As the NTIA states, “an eligible entity can incorporate information from its own mapping data and must conduct its own challenge process prior to awarding subgrants for broadband deployment.”Essentially, this means that as the state/eligible entity begins to consider which projects or areas should receive broadband funding and how much, they must also allow the potential funding recipients or residents of the state to challenge the proposed allocations. This challenge process includes determining whether a location is unserved or underserved. If successful, the challenges can be submitted to NTIA for review and approval.When do states need to run their challenge process? The NTIA says “after the submission of the Initial Proposal but before the distribution of funding for broadband deployment.”What information may a state use in their challenge process? Again, the NTIA offers that an eligible entity “may decide to accept a broader range of information that may bear on broadband service in an area than is considered in an FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) challenge.” In other words, <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/BroadbandData/consumers#:~:text=If%20the%20information%20about%20the,map%20and%20submitting%20the%20form." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">more information than just speed and latency.</a>What does a state have to share with the NTIA and when? The agency says the state/eligible entity “must notify NTIA of any modifications” to its initial funding proposal/challenge process proposal submitted earlier to qualify for funding awards, such as those “that are necessitated by successful challenges to its initial determinations.” Yet, the NTIA also reserves its own right to reject or confirm challenges.As for when the agency needs states to share this data back with the NTIA, the answer is: “After resolving each challenge and at least 60 days before allocating grant funds for network deployment,” and the data they’re asking for is quite robust and comprehensive, including, “the final classification of each unserved location, underserved location, or eligible community anchor institution within the jurisdiction” of the state/entity.Confusing? You bet. That’s why Ready.net’s <a href="https://ready.net/products/challenge-process-coordinator" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Challenge Process Coordinator</a> is here to help.<h2>How the Challenge Process Coordinator From Ready.net Helps States</h2>The Challenge Process Coordinator is a secure, fast, online tool with rich and easily navigable data dashboards and 100% compliance with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) regulations.The Challenge Process Coordinator was designed from the ground up as a custom tool specifically to help states manage their BEAD and CPF challenge process. It follows the Broadband Mapping Coalition's recommended methodology and integrates seamlessly with a state's Broadband Fabric.By using it, your team at the state broadband office will be able to publish your public map, direct selected members of the public to take reliable, comprehensive broadband speed tests, and then access the results, view multiple layers of data including speedtests and socioeconomic/demographic, invite stakeholders to weigh in, and run your challenge process — all from a single system.<h2>The Tools Your State Broadband Office Needs, All In One Place</h2>With the Challenge Process Coordinator you and your designated team members can quickly see, at a glance, helpful statistics including when your broadband challenge map was most recently updated, how many challenges are currently under review and how many locations they originate from, how many challenges have been processed, how many challenges from different locations have been accepted or rejected.Using highly organized and easy-to-read tabs, you can also click through to view a list of all the specific challenges and see each one’s real-time status using a color coded status indicator, and click through to expand for much more rich information on the specific challenge, including who or what organization originated it and where. Other tabs provide the opportunity to view challenges in-review, processed, and withdrawn.No more messy spreadsheets, missing email attachments, or leaving out legitimate complaints. Take care of your entire challenge process in one place, from anywhere, using your existing infrastructure and the <a href="https://ready.net/products/challenge-process-coordinator" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Challenge Process Coordinator</a> from Ready.net.What's more, the Challenge Process Coordinator is customizable to fit your state's unique rules and procedures.One of the most valuable features of the Challenge Process Coordinator is its built-in tools for requesting evidence of service. This ensures that you have all the information you need to make informed decisions and accurately reflect broadband coverage in your state.<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Figure_challenge_request_and_documents_692a2bcc13/Figure_challenge_request_and_documents_692a2bcc13.svg?updated_at=2023-04-05T20:34:04.326Z" alt="Pyramid Figure">
</div>If you're feeling overwhelmed by the challenge process, the Challenge Process Coordinator could be the solution you've been looking for. With its user-friendly interface and customizable features, it's a powerful tool that can help you navigate this complex and important process with confidence.Clearly, there’s a lot for state broadband offices to consider when launching, running, and evaluating their NTIA-required challenge process — so much that it can feel overwhelming.Thankfully, there's a great solution waiting in the wings: The Challenge Process Coordinator from Ready.net. By using this super-fast and secure online tool, states can manage the entire challenge process easily in a single place. It's completely customizable, integrates seamlessly with a state's Broadband Fabric, provides built-in tools for requesting evidence of service and reviewing challenges, and connects directly with verified external stakeholders &nbsp;— all while staying compliant with federal rules and regulations. It can help state broadband offices navigate this complex and important process with confidence.Don’t Let Challenges Get You Down. See what the <a href="https://ready.net/products/challenge-process-coordinator" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Challenge Process Coordinator</a> can do for your team.

The pitfalls and hazards of the challenge process, what can be learned from the Fabric model, and how to roll out a Ready Challenge Process

Practical advice for state broadband offices running an efficient, equitable, data-driven broadband grant challenge process. 

Running a Robust, Transparent, Efficient BEAD Challenge Process

Get the most from your state’s challenge process

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Effective BEAD Challenge Process

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Running a Robust, Transparent, Efficient Challenge Process

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<div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Key_Figure_Beyond_Mapping_What_s_Next_for_Your_State_Broadband_Office_5a112bbd56/Key_Figure_Beyond_Mapping_What_s_Next_for_Your_State_Broadband_Office_5a112bbd56.svg?updated_at=2023-04-11T16:55:13.211Z" alt="Map Figure"></div><h2>Mapping is the first step in your 1,000-step journey to deploy BEAD. Here’s a look ahead to what comes next</h2>The $42.45 billion federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program administered by the <a href="https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/BEAD-Frequently-Asked-Questions-%28FAQs%29_Version-2.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)</a> is providing states, U.S. territories, and Native American tribes with unprecedented levels of broadband funding. (Note: state/territory/tribe will be used interchangeably from here on in this article). &nbsp;However, as state broadband offices move to accept the funds and deploy them, many have been left dwelling on the first task: mapping the current state of broadband connectivity throughout their borders.It’s an important step, of course, as it will serve as the basis for all others to come, showing which areas and specific locations are unserved or underserved by broadband and should thus be eligible for funding.But this is but one step among thousands states must complete to turn their federal (and state matching) dollars into actual, blazing fast broadband service needed to keep Americans connected in the modern world.What’s next for your state’s broadband office? This piece frames the series ahead, and the state’s next set of challenges, and shows how Ready.net’s Broadband tools can help your state broadband office.&nbsp;<h2>Create an Initial Proposal and Final Proposal</h2>No, this isn’t the “Request for Initial Planning Funds” your state submitted back in August 2022. The &nbsp;“Initial Proposal” document is a distinct beast of its own, and is required to include a description of the “the competitive process” your state will “use to select subgrantees to construct broadband projects,” e.g. how is your state actually determining who gets the money, where it’s going, what it will be used for, and who it will help.Before you send this document &nbsp;to the the NTIA, your state broadband office must allow the public the opportunity to comment and include a record of the feedback in the submitted document.The good news is that this document isn’t due until 180 days after your state received notice of how much money the NTIA planned to award you.One year after the NTIA approves your state’s Initial Proposal, your office will need to submit a Final Proposal through the NTIA Grants Portal at “grants.ntia.gov.” The Final Proposal must include a detailed plan for allocating grant funds throughout your state to unserved and underserved locations, as well as a timeline for the start, various in-progress phases, and completion of each project.Your state must also provide a description of the processes for oversight and accountability to ensure proper use of the grant funds, a certification of coordination with Tribal Governments, local community organizations, and unions and worker organizationsIt must also include a description of the results of the challenge process.The Final Proposal should also include a description of how your state broadband office is getting the participation of non-traditional broadband providers. In addition, be sure it contains the implementation status of plans related to streamlined permitting processes and cost-effective access, labor and workforce activities, utilization of minority businesses and labor surplus area firms, low-cost plan requirements. Further, it needs to address how the projects are taking into account climate change and resilience.The NTIA will provide technical assistance to states throughout to ensure their Final Proposals meet all requirements and goals of the program.The Final Proposal must follow a standardized format in legible font on 8 ½ by 11” paper. Figures, graphs, images, and pictures may be presented in landscape orientation and should be of a size that is easily readable or viewable.<div class="raw-html-embed"><figure>
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<figcaption>Setting your office up for success: grant your team superpowers.</figcaption>
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</div><h2>Launch, Manage, and Document Your State’s Broadband Challenge Process</h2>Ok, so your state has been awarded some BEAD funding (at least its allocated minimum of 20%) — congratulations! And hopefully, more is on the way.Now your state office will need to conduct and run your own transparent challenge process to allow members of the public, internet service providers (ISPs) and other organizations the chance to challenge the state’s maps and proposed funding allocations.Specifically, state broadband offices must:<ul><li>Design a challenge process and get it approved by the NTIA. This was actually a necessary component of applying for funding beyond the minimum allocation, so state offices should have already taken care of this one.&nbsp;</li><li>Run the challenge for the public in their state, ensuring that it is (in the NTIA’s words) “transparent, evidence-based, and expeditious,”. This means opening up the state broadband Fabric and service maps to be challenged. Using a tool like Ready.net’s Challenge Process Coordinator can help.&nbsp;</li><li>Evaluate challenges and approve or disapprove of them based on the data provided by the challengers.&nbsp;</li><li>Then, the state broadband office/team “must notify NTIA of any modifications” to its initial funding proposal/challenge process proposal submitted earlier to qualify for funding awards, such as those “that are necessitated by successful challenges to its initial determinations.” Yet, the NTIA also reserves its own right to reject or confirm challenges.&nbsp;</li><li>Notify the NTIA of any changes in the state’s funding allocation plan at least 60 days prior to issuing the funding awards to subgrantees, including “the final classification of each unserved location, underserved location, or eligible community anchor institution within the jurisdiction” of the state/entity.</li></ul>Sounds like a lot — and it is. Fortunately, states have an easy one-stop-shop to turn to: the Challenge Process Coordinator from Ready.net. Learn more about that here.&nbsp;<h2>Next Up: Handling Your State’s Subgrantee Applications</h2>How is your state deciding where to allocate its BEAD funding and other sources of broadband funding (Capital Projects Fund, state matching grants, etc)?Following the NTIA’s and Federal Communications Commission’s provisions that the initial 20% of the funding be distributed to areas “consisting of at least 80% unserved locations” and are “in &nbsp;location in which the percentage of individuals with a household income at or below 150% of the poverty line applicable to a family of the size involved.”After that, it’s up to the states to decide which “subgrantees,” or grant recipients, get the funds, but the process the state uses to award the money must be “fair, open, and competitive” according to the NTIA and clear to applications. Also, the state broadband office must describe their process in their initial proposal and final proposal documents sent to the NTIA. And, the grant award process must abide by a long list of NTIA-established principles see on pages 46-48 of this document.The grant process may also be awarded to middle mile infrastructure projects to reach interconnection points and ensure technical feasibility and financial sustainability.States can accept grant applications from companies aiming to serve unserved and underserved locations collectively or separately, but they must prioritize unserved areas and ensure their coverage in the final plan. Non-traditional providers such as cooperatives, nonprofits, and private companies may apply as subgrantees, and audited financial statements of publicly traded parent companies are acceptable. State broadband offices must evaluate grant applicants’ compliance with fair labor practices.Using Ready.net’s Grant Application Management Engine, states can deploy enterprise BOSS (business support systems/operating support systems) tools to help states manage their relationship with grant-seeking applicants directly through a simple, clean, powerful, easy-to-use web app.<div class="raw-html-embed"><figure>
<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/ready-net-public-assets/Applicants_management_374e75ceb0/Applicants_management_374e75ceb0.svg?updated_at=2023-04-04T18:30:46.351Z" alt="Applicants Figure">
<figcaption>Setting your office up for success: grant your team superpowers.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div><h2>Create and Submit Your State’s Five-Year-Plan</h2>According to the NTIA, the state broadband office must submit a “five-year-action plan” within 270 days of receiving its initial planning funds — less than one year. This five-year-plan must include:<ul><li>Details of the state’s existing broadband program or office</li><li>Additional funding sources for broadband deployment.</li><li>Existing broadband deployment efforts funded by the federal government&nbsp;</li><li>Identification of employees who will assist in implementing and administering the BEAD funds in the state</li><li>What the state determines to be obstacles or barriers to the successful implementation of the BEAD Program.</li><li>Asset inventory that catalogs broadband adoption, affordability, equity, access, and deployment activities in the plan.</li><li>Incorporate available federal, state, or local broadband availability and adoption data&nbsp;</li><li>Local and regional broadband service needs and gaps</li><li>Explain how the entire state will be able to get reliable, affordable, high-speed internet service by the end of the five years</li></ul><h2>Don’t Forget Your Reporting Requirements and Compliance!</h2>As your state moves through the BEAD Program, your state broadband office will need to provide the NTIA with regular reports and updates on progress, making sure the state, subgrantees and everyone they're working with is following the rules and requirements. See <a href="https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/BEAD-Frequently-Asked-Questions-%28FAQs%29_Version-2.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">pages 53-55 of this document</a> for more in-depth reporting information from the NTIA.Within 90 days of receiving BEAD grant funds, state broadband offices must submit an initial report to the NTIA’s Assistant Secretary that describes the planned and actual use of funds, the planned and actual subgrant process, the establishment of mechanisms to ensure subgrantees comply with eligible uses, and any other information required by the Assistant Secretary.States must also submit semiannual reports to track progress against approved plans and describe how grant funds were expended, each service provided, the number of locations where broadband service was made available, and the demographics of those served. The semiannual report must include an SF-425 and a Federal Financial Report and meet the requirements described in the Department of Commerce Financial Assistance Standard Terms and Conditions.Your state must obtain and review the information on how their grant recipients have complied with federal labor and employment laws, and related records of any other entities involved in the project (contractors and subcontractors), including how they complied (or not) when working on broadband deployment projects in the last three years.Additionally, your state office may consider the subgrantee's historical use of contracting and subcontracting arrangements and examples of past performance in similar projects. The subgrantee's plan for ensuring compliance with fair labor practices should include how they will ensure compliance in their own labor and employment practices, as well as those of their contractors and subcontractors. It should also include information on applicable wage scales and payment practices and how workplace safety committees will be implemented.Finally, within one year of expending all grant funds received, states must submit a Final Report that describes how the funds were expended, each service provided, the number of locations where broadband service was made available, and the demographics of those served. The Final Report must also include reports received from subgrantees, and certify that the state complied with all requirements and additional reporting requirements prescribed by the Assistant Secretary.Ready.net’s new Ongoing Reporting and Compliance tool, coming in 2024, manages the state’s ongoing relationship with applicants and all of their reporting and compliance requirements with entities such as NTIA, FCC and others.&nbsp;<h2>Call to Action</h2>As state broadband offices gear up to deploy the $42.45 billion federal BEAD program, they need to begin thinking beyond mapping. There are many other steps left ahead of them, including creating initial and final proposals, running a transparent challenge process, handling subgrantee applications, and providing regular reporting and ensuring compliance of all who participate. Ready.net offers tools to help state, territory, and tribal broadband offices throughout the entire process. Learn more.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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