HELENA — Two years ago, the federal government announced Montana would be eligible for more than $600 million dollars in funding through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment, or BEAD, program. It’s intended to bring high-speed internet to everyone in the U.S. who’s still unserved. But when the Biden administration gave way to the Trump administration in January, that led to big changes in how the state can award that money.
On June 6, federal authorities officially delivered new guidance for the BEAD program. That started a 90-day clock for states like Montana to get their implementation plans in line with those new rules.
“This is going to be fast and furious,” said Misty Ann Giles, director of the Montana Department of Administration, who oversees the Montana Broadband Office.
(Watch the video for more on how the federal changes are affecting Montana's broadband plans.)
On Wednesday, Giles updated the state Communications Advisory Commission on the new process.
Last August, federal authorities approved Montana’s initial plan for awarding BEAD funding. The state then had a year to work through the application process, with their final decisions initially due July 31 of this year.
Giles said the state hadn’t awarded any funding when the new administration took over, but they were in the process of working with the companies that had applied.
“When we started learning that guidance was coming in pretty quickly from the Trump administration, either in May or June, just for the sake of our companies and not continuing wasted efforts, we did a ‘pencils down,’” she said. “Since June 6, we've been pivoting into the new policy notice: restructuring the application, the scoring, updating our maps to the most current Fabric, and as you saw today, working with our providers to get everything ready to go to relaunch.”
The Trump administration said its changes to the BEAD program would “eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens” and lower costs. Gov. Greg Gianforte praised the changes in a statement after they were announced, saying they were “streamlining this program and getting rid of the burdensome rules put in place by the Biden administration.”
One of the biggest changes is that the program originally favored using fiber-optic cables to bring service to most locations. Supporters of fiber internet argue it’s more capable and more reliable, but it can also be labor-intensive and expensive to install.
Now, there’s no preference between types of service. That means fiber, fixed wireless towers and satellite internet will all be in competition.
In addition, the new federal rules mean by far the most important criterion for choosing one provider over another is going to be lowest overall cost. Montana has set up secondary criteria, but they’ll only come into play if two applicants’ bids are within 15% of each other.
“This administration and the notice was extremely clear: Price, price, price,” said Anthony Curcio, a senior partner with the analytics firm Summit, who’s been advising the Montana Broadband Office. “That is the first criteria.”
Leaders said during Wednesday’s meeting that the expectation had been from the start that not all the remaining unserved locations could be efficiently served with fiber, and that satellite internet services would likely have to cover ones left over. MTN asked Giles if, now that there was no preference for fiber, it was likely that a satellite service might simply seek to take over all the available service locations.
“I don't want to speculate, but I know our earlier conversations, they were not leaning towards a ‘We can just do everything,’ because they also have a national bandwidth problem that they have to take into effect, but really being laser-focused on those areas that they know from their data modeling would be better served by satellite than a fixed wireless, unlicensed fixed wireless or fiber solution,” she said.
(VIDEO EXTRA: Previous broadband funding in Montana and the possible impact of the "One Big Bill.")
Giles said the state is hoping to get approval from federal authorities to open their “Benefit of the Bargain” application period around July 7. Once that period opens, companies will have about two weeks to update their applications or submit new applications.
“We know that 15-day window we're offering is going to be tight, but if you look at the timelines, we have to do that for us to have time to review and initiate those public comment proceedings,” said Giles. “But I do feel like, if we have to have a team in the country that can pull this off in 90 days, it’s ours. We've been a leader of the pack so far, and so we're committed to getting that done.”
The state is expected to finish reviewing applications by August 14 and complete their recommendations for awarding funding by September. Giles said they could hear a decision from the federal government on whether to approve that final proposal by December.
