NTIA hands over $45B to state broadband offices

Every mile of broadband that the US Department of Commerce subsidizes in its $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, or BEAD program, means another mile of telehealth potential geographic market share. As the pandemic has graphically revealed, hundreds of miles of homes are without broadband.

And it’s hard enough to get effective telehealth without broadband.

Through BEAD, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the Department of Commerce, is providing $42.5 billion to towns, cities and counties to build high-speed Internet (broadband) networks and infrastructure.

BEAD is the largest component of the $65 billion broadband programs included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Complementing BEAD is the Digital Equity Act program, which is providing $2.5 billion in grants to communities to provide training, digital literacy to residents, and help fight the digital divide.

The NTIA worked with the Federal Communications Commission to create the $14.2 billion Affordable Connectivity Program, which the FCC now oversees. The ACP subsidizes $30/month to eligible households – $75/month to Native American households – for Internet access and $100 for a computing device. Some ISPs provide telehealth access to residents when they enroll for an ACP.

NTIA is implementing several small grant programs and most of these have already started. The Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program is a grant program of approximately $3 billion, and $1.35 billion has been awarded. 42,268 unserved Native American homes, as well as businesses and major institutions that previously had no connectivity, now have access to the Internet. Additionally, there are 23 grants that will create 1,073 new jobs.
Connecting Minority Communities is a $268 grant program that targets eligible historically black colleges or universities, tribal colleges or universities, and minority-serving institutions. These grants can pay for broadband upgrades to facilities, students’ Internet access and computing equipment, and broadband to minority-owned businesses and nonprofits within a 15-mile radius from universities and colleges.

Video made telehealth a star

Community-owned broadband networks have the power to turn entrepreneurs into captains of industry, change the course of governments and make people laugh at kitty antics.

They may also contribute to healing the sick, rehabilitating the lame, or calming troubled minds. To do all this, it helps to have a killer app as well as fast, reliable internet. Not just the speed for the individual, but blazing fast as an infrastructure carrying terabytes of data for thousands of people at a time.

I believe that telehealth is collectively a “killer app” for broadband in this third decade of the 21st century. Almost everyone gets sick at some point, or is responsible for someone else getting sick. Communities are finding that telehealth increases broadband adoption as well as improves the physical and economic health of residents.

Telehealth can harness and focus broadband and hospital IT investments in digital progress for urban and rural communities.

Video may have killed the radio star (as the Buggles once sang on MTV), but it certainly gave life to telehealth during the pandemic.

Jamming technologies are growing rapidly and giving rise to telehealth applications everywhere: artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, virtual reality, augmented reality. But the nature of the technology beast is that it always needs more: more bandwidth, more data storage capacity – and more funding.

‘show me the money’

Each state has a broadband office responsible for distributing funds to unserved and underserved communities. The IIJA defines “unserved” as households that do not have access to broadband at 25 megabits per second download and 3 Mbps upload. “Underserved” households are defined as those that do not have access to 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up.

Over the last year – in some places even longer – the Broadband Office has been holding regular meetings and town halls to assess the broadband needs of their communities.

Every hospital IT person, telehealth vendor and their customers, project teams, and healthcare stakeholder who hasn’t heard from their local or state broadband official or advocate should rise to this opportunity and be proactive.

State Broadband Offices are responsible for determining how the funds will be distributed, whether in a lottery form or a competitive bidding scenario. Many states designate someone as a healthcare/telehealth advocate, champion, statewide healthcare or healthcare representative.

People in the telehealth and broadband industries don’t normally meet each other, but there has been a lot of activity and meetings between the two camps in the past six or seven months as people have realized how symbiotic these relationships should be.

Ultimately, most telehealth planning and stakeholder interactions are local. Over the past year or so, much has been written about telehealth as well as the need for better broadband connectivity in communities.

Partnerships are important when you need $40 or $50 million or more for a broadband network, and state governments are key partners. Most of those states are supplementing federal funding with broadband money.

Another NTIA grant program is about $1 billion going to states’ mid-mile networks. The middle mile is made up of high-capacity fiber lines that carry large amounts of data at high speeds over long distances between local networks and the global Internet network. In addition to the $930 million provided by the NTIA, recipient states like Michigan are putting in similar funds totaling $848 million.

“Being able to use a mix-and-match financial strategy to afford broadband deployment across wide areas is cost-effective,” said Tim Mayalone, CEO of Cherry Capital Connections, a Michigan-based ISP. “We plan to pool our FCC, county and Michigan state funds because we have many miles to cover.”

Another NTIA grant program is about $1 billion going to states’ mid-mile networks. The middle mile is made up of high-capacity fiber lines that carry large amounts of data at high speeds over long distances between local networks and the global Internet network. In addition to the $930 million provided by the NTIA, recipient states like Michigan are putting in similar funds totaling $848 million.

“The middle-mile is a great telehealth-vehicle in support of last-mile fiber-to-the-home,” Maylone said. “Our residents and health care professionals find that it enables them to stay home rather than be hospitalized or readmitted, reducing health insurance through proactive and preventive medical care – and first responders have higher Can provide quality diagnostic and medical care.”