Introducing ARC: Automated Reporting & Compliance™️ for BEAD Grants

The Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program is our country’s largest-ever investment in broadband infrastructure and arguably its last. $42.5 billion hangs in the balance, and tens of millions of families are depending on it for improved broadband connectivity.

Ensuring broadband access, however, is more than award announcements and disbursing checks. 

Questions continue to surface while everyone awaits checks in the mail. BEAD’s careful deployment demands years of reporting and compliance auditing in addition to monitoring in order to ensure that funding is utilized efficiently. 

Providers are familiar with strict reporting and compliance requirements, but BEAD’s requirements are unlike any other. And, more importantly, they don’t end with the BEAD NOFO and its parent legislation, IIJA. 

NTIA is expected to release additional guidance later in 2024.

It’s vital to our nation’s largest-ever broadband infrastructure investment that we empower state broadband offices and providers to meet program obligations. 

It’s why we’re pleased to announce Ready ARC 

Problems: Protecting America’s investment is a noble goal, but BEAD’s stringent post-award requirements create a burden for local, non-traditional providers unable to hire an entire team of compliance specialists. Self-reporting also poses its own challenges, and comes with waste, fraud and abuse risks.

BEAD presents both an opportunity and challenge for states. States face numerous trackable project parameters that awardees must use to certify accuracy of progress reports. NTIA has adopted an address-level definition for passings, creating a geospatial challenge for state broadband offices.

States are also encouraged to surpass minimum reporting and compliance requirements, such as increasing reporting frequency. Recipients are expected to comply with requirements from both the state and NTIA. 

This problem is exacerbated for grant recipients; meeting compliance and reporting requirements is labor intensive. Very few people want to discuss BEAD’s myriad procurement, labor and environmental regulations.

The ARC addresses both problems by minimizing the burden of manual reporting and compliance by tethering directly to the awardee operator’s system of record. ARC uses software where it can be most helpful: the boring, banal back-office paperwork. 

This leads to the best outcome: all stakeholders united throughout the deployment journey.

ARC for State Broadband Offices

ARC ensures that provider’s live up to their obligations . It also helps grantors ensure awarded deployments remain on track throughout the post-award lifecycle. 

With ARC, your focus shifts to the most important job to be done: connecting families to better broadband. 

Empower your sub-grantees to deliver above and beyond. 

• Combat waste, fraud, and abuse
• Meet NTIA’s stringent obligations for reporting and monitoring
• Compare progress to promises made: identify deviations from plans, highlight risks, and proactively communicate updates

Through Proof of Passings and the Challenge Process Coordinator’s quarterly map update, Ready states can avoid the market failures of previous broadband grant funding cycles. No more promises made, promises broken. 

Track BEAD deployments in real time

Monitor sub-grantee progress while keeping up to date with deployment progress. Spreadsheets attached to emails won’t tell you whether service will degrade as a result of oversubscribed, under-invested equipment, but the network knows.

ARC for BEAD applicants

Apply for BEAD with confidence – at any size 

ARC saves busy providers of all sizes time by skipping the manual self-reporting  and mountains of paperwork with a single digital console. 

This allows you to focus on your top priority: connecting happy subscribers. Software can’t pull fiber for you or deliver the great customer service you’re known for. 

Back Office Secret Sauce is your BEAD success platform built to help you replace your time-intensive, back-office processes with digital workflows. Bye, bye paperwork!

• Supply updates routinely
• Coordinate deployment with marketing efforts

ARC for key stakeholders

Busy consultants who need to be able to do more with less.

Utility insurers and investors leverage ARC to follow the journey of their grant-backed utility deployments.

How does ARC work? 

ARC replaces manual self-reporting with software together with the proofs required from systems of record utilized by the awardee operator. Answer tough geospatial questions ✨automagically✨with the latest snapshot:

• Where is the network now?
•  How is service at location X?
• What plans are available and at what price?
• Are broadband performance obligations met?
• Audit Trail to ensure all stakeholder interactions are captured and retrievable

ARC gathers proof from operator systems of record and, unlike messy manual self-reporting, tethers operator equipment for source-of-truth.

Proof of Passings

ARC’s open Proof of Passings Standard (POPS) allows you to use any BABA-compliant equipment and still benefit from the time savings.

• Geospatial attestations of service availability, quality, and affordability 
• Automate and digitize passings reporting process

Proof of Marketing

• BEAD requires proof that awardees make demonstrable efforts to market plans to unserved and underserved locations.

Proof of Labor

• Davis-Bacon and other labor and workforce requirements are just as vital to BEAD compliance as monitoring service.

Broadband Audit

• The Broadband Audit serves as the ongoing, public report card that evaluates the state of broadband service and penetration in each state and territory
• Get alerts for non-compliant events and upcoming requirements

Performance Test & Survey

• Double check and verify the broadband quality you expect to see within communities

And more of the tools that make ARC: 

• Proof of Service
• Proof of Low Cost Option
• Proof of Funding

ARC in the wild: the Diamond State is Ready for BEAD

Arkansas is the first state slated to utilize Ready’s automated Recording & Compliance tools. Arkansas Broadband Office and Arkansas’ internet service providers will enhance their productivity and streamline this important component of the BEAD process between the state, applicants, consultants, and key  stakeholders.