Meet Josh Breitbart

New York State of BEAD

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:

• Make sure that there is broadband connectivity for every location in the state.
• Facilitate a robust broadband marketplace.
• 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.

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.”

Foundation for Success 

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. 

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.” 

Many counties also have public or publicly controlled nonprofit regional fiber networks as well, bringing technical capabilities you would not normally find in communities. 

Building with BEAD

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. 

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. 

Billion with a B

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.” 

And in establishing Connect All, New York’s governor has announced five programs: 

• The Affordable Housing Connectivity Program – A $100 million subsidy to bring broadband infrastructure to affordable and public housing. 
• The Municipal Infrastructure Program – $228 million in funding for public and publicly controlled infrastructure to connect ‘tens of thousands’ of homes. 
• The ConnectALL Deployment Program – These are the BEAD dollars, $664 million. 
• 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. 
• Connectivity Innovation to advance new broadband solutions, technologies, and business models to meet the needs of rural and low-income communities in the state. 

No Cherries left in the 2% 

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.” 

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.” 

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.

New York’s Challenge Process 

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. 

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?” 

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.

New York Through and Through 

I ask every state broadband leader why they do this… if they hate themselves, love long hours, or are just gluttons for punishment. 

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.” 

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.  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?”