The Oklahoma Broadband Office (OBO) says local providers have broken ground on several new grant-fueled fiber projects designed to provide high-speed Internet access to long unserved or underserved communities across wide swaths of the Sooner state.

According to two different announcements by the state’s broadband office, the OBO recently greenlit $65.9 million in new fiber expansion initiatives in the Southern part of the state, as well as another $24.6 million in deployments for the northern-central part of the state.

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The fiber upgrade projects were made possible via $158 million in Capital Projects Fund grants made possible by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The grants are expected to help fund more than 50 projects in 28 counties.

In the Southern part of the state, $43.2 million in federal grants – plus $22.8 million in matching funds – will connect over 2,000 unserved homes and businesses in partnership with Medicine Park Telephone, Oklahoma Fiber Network, Oklahoma Western Telephone, Phoenix Long Distance, Southern Plains Cable, Southwest Oklahoma Telephone, and Texhoma Fiber.

New York State officials have unveiled the first round of broadband deployment grants made possible by the state’s $100 million Affordable Housing Connectivity Program (AHCP), which aims to drive affordable fiber and Wi-Fi to low-income state residents trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide.

As part of the program, the state recently announced it will be spending $13.1 million to connect 14,167 lower income residents across Buffalo, Rochester, upper Manhattan and the Bronx with both affordable gigabit-capable fiber – and low cost Wi-Fi.

Flume, the partner ISP chosen by the state, will offer residents the choice of three broadband tiers: 100/20 megabit per second (Mbps) fiber for $10 per month, symmetrical 200 Mbps fiber for $15 per month, and symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) fiber for $30 per month. All three subsidized fiber options will be locked at that price point until 2034, according to the state.

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“In today's digital age, access to reliable, affordable high-speed Internet isn't just about convenience – it's about ensuring every New Yorker can participate fully in our modern economy and society,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said of the new grants. “Through these strategic investments, we're not only installing fiber and infrastructure, we're opening doors to education, healthcare and economic opportunity.”

Faster, Better, Cheaper

With the incoming Trump administration and the ascendance of GOP leaders taking aim at key aspects of broadband expansion initiatives embedded in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, industry insiders expect the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program to likely get a major facelift in the coming months.

GOP Senate leaders have signaled they will push for BEAD to be scaled back or reconfigured.

One way they may do that is to remove the law’s preference for funding fiber network deployments and create a path for subsidizing Musk’s satellite Internet company, arguing that Starlink would be a more cost-effective solution to bring broadband to rural America.

Late last week, in fact, NTIA released its “Final Guidance for BEAD Funding of Alternative Broadband Technology.” And while the updated guidelines still considers fiber deployments as “priority broadband projects,” the agency administering the BEAD program now explicitly says that states can award “LEO Capacity Subgrants.”

Digital inclusion advocates are bracing themselves for an uncertain year ahead.

As the incoming GOP regime takes aim at key aspects of the Digital Equity Act (DEA) and the BEAD (Broadband, Equity, Access, And Deployment) program, those working to bridge the digital divide have more questions than answers just as states are preparing to dole out federal grant money yet to be awarded to grant recipients.

One major question looming over both BEAD and the Digital Equity Act is whether a new Congress can leverage the Congressional Review Act – a tool Congress can use to overturn certain federal agency actions – to undermine the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law behind the national “Internet For All” initiative.

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“The Congressional Review Act only applies to things that were adopted in the last six months. I know that there were a number of things the FCC did to make sure that they were done and would be non-reviewable under the CRA and I suspect NTIA did that as well (with BEAD),” former FCC Chief of Staff and now New Street Research policy advisor Blair Levin said during our final Building For Digital Equity (B4DE) livestream of 2024.

States are poised to receive $42.5 billion in new Broadband, Equity, Access, And Deployment (BEAD) subsidies in the new year thanks to the 2021 infrastructure bill. But a growing number of ISPs in states like Minnesota say they may not participate in this latest round of federal grants, citing bureaucracy and burdensome restrictions.

While American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grants came with significant leeway as to how grant money could be spent, BEAD grants, overseen by the National Telecommunications And Information Administration (NTIA), come with numerous requirements related to lien mandates, low-cost service obligations, and deployment technology.

Those restrictions serve a purpose in the wake of the boondoggle that was the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which resulted in a massive number of defaulting bids and unfinished projects because companies bidding on projects lacked the competency or financing to finish their awarded projects. It’s a major reason the NTIA was put in charge of BEAD.

But many Minnesota ISPs are still bristling at BEAD’s requirements, according to Brent Christensen, president and CEO of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance, an organization that represents 70 ISPs across the North Star State.

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“My members are telling me they’re not going to participate,” Christensen recently told MinnPost when asked about the $42.45 billion broadband program. “The way that BEAD is structured. I don’t know how anybody’s going to participate.”

North Carolina’s Roanoke Cooperative continues to make steady progress with expansion of its Fybe last mile fiber network within The Tar Heel State.

Cooperative officials tell ILSR that the cooperative and a coalition of organizations across North Carolina have major expansion plans in the works, starting with a fiber build in Halifax County, population 47,298.

Currently, Fybe provides fiber broadband service to around 6,000 subscribers in North Carolina, but thanks to an historic infusion of federal and state grants, the hope is to expand fiber access to the bulk of unserved addresses county-wide.

Fybe COO Bo Coughlin tells ILSR that the lion’s share of the cooperative's upcoming efforts to bring affordable connectivity to unserved and under-served portions of North Carolina will be under the banner of a coalition dubbed Encore, a nonprofit collaboration between MCNC, North Carolina Electric Membership Cooperatives (EMC), and Fybe.

“MCNC has been around for 40 years,” Coughlin notes. “It started as an economic Development institution funded by the state. Their goal was originally to help birth the microchip industry in RTP down in Raleigh, but today they provide transport to around a hundred universities, charter schools, and community anchor institutions across nearly 100 counties.”

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Back in April, Fybe won a $9 million Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) grant to help bring fiber to the largely underserved, heavily-rural residents of Martin, Bertie, Halifax, and Hertford counties.

“So currently, we pass about 5,000 total homes across Northampton and Halifax,” Coughlin said of Fybe’s current footprint.

States wary about the restrictions and delays with looming federal broadband grants are poised to put significant taxpayer resources into Starlink and other low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations. The problem: such services often aren’t affordable, raise environmental questions, and may struggle to keep pace with consumer capacity demand.

Back in March, Maine unveiled a $5.4 million initiative to offer Starlink Low Earth Orbit (LEO) terminals to 9,000 state residents outside the reach of broadband from existing terrestrial providers.

An estimated 9,000 locations in the state (1.5 percent of residents) have no access to broadband, mostly peppered across rural Oxford, Penobscot, and Aroostook counties.

While well intentioned, the state’s initiative immediately sparked a debate about whether Starlink is the best use of taxpayer resources.

Starlink May Be Part of Solution

LEO satellite broadband has understandable allure for state broadband offices tasked with showing the federal government they have a solution for every premise – household and business – in the state. Depending on geography and state, some of these locations may require $100,000 for a terrestrial wireline connection.

Many of these unserved locations may be inhabited for a few weeks a year by the family of billionaires or 52 weeks a year by a family barely able to afford the fuel to live there. Spending $100,000 on that household may mean tens of other households see no improvement or have to settle for worse technology. And depending on who you ask, NTIA either demands that the state actually connect that household or simply have a feasible plan to achieve that connection.