New federal policies regarding implementation of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program has disrupted the Wisconsin process to distribute the grants.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is the federal agency responsible for administering BEAD, published the “BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice” June 6.
The policy notice requires Wisconsin to implement significant changes to its BEAD program and eliminate certain requirements that were previously included in the BEAD Notice of Funding Opportunity and in the state of Wisconsin’s approved Initial Proposal.
States must rescind all prior preliminary awards and complete a Benefit of the Bargain round in which all BEAD eligible locations are available for bidding. (See the rescind letter)
The new policy notice eliminates requirements related to fair labor practices, workforce development, middle-class affordability, climate change resilience, and open network access.
The scoring criteria initially approved is no longer allowable to be used in the BOB round, due in part to its inclusion of criteria associated with the eliminated requirements. Instead the new scoring criteria must primarily favor the lowest cost bidder. Certain additional criteria, including speed to deployment, speed of network, and the applicant’s receipt of a preliminary award in round one, are allowed to be considered when the project costs are within 15 percent of each other.
The Benefit of the Bargain round must also adopt a technology neutral approach. Prior to the policy notice BEAD had a fiber first approach that gave priority to fiber projects; now all technologies meeting scalability, latency, and speed performance standards must be considered without preference.
States have until Sept. 4 to implement all changes, complete the BOB subgranting round and submit the final proposal to NTIA. NTIA will review all final proposals with 90 days.
