The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) created two grant programs to address digital equity and inclusion. This section of the IIJA recognizes that providing broadband access alone will not close the digital divide. There are millions of homes that lack computers and the digital skills needed to use broadband. The grant programs take two different approaches to try to close the digital divide.
The State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program is giving money to States to distribute through grants. The stated goal of this grant program is to promote the achievement of digital equity, support digital inclusion activities, and build capacity for efforts by States relating to the adoption of broadband. The Act allocates $1.44 billion to the States for this program. The NTIA was slow in getting this program running, and recently announced $840 million in funding to cover grants that were intended for 2022 through 2024.
The second new grant program is called the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program and is being administered directly by NTIA. The budget for this grant program is $1.25 billion, with $250 million per year to be awarded from 2022 until 2026. Congress also appropriated an additional $250 million that should become available in October. 5% of the total funding is reserved for Native Entities, and 1% is set aside for territories. This NTIA has been slow in launching this program but finally dropped the first Notice of Funding Opportunity that makes $750 million available for the grants. This also means there will be another $750 million of grants coming by 2026.
Specifically, the funds are intended to be used for
- The development and implementation of digital inclusion activities
- Programs that facilitate the adoption of broadband to provide educational and employment opportunities
- Training programs that cover basic, advanced, and applied skills
- Workforce development programs
- Access to equipment, instrumentation, networking capability, hardware and software, or digital network technology for broadband services at low or no cost
- The construction or operation of public access computing centers.
The grants can be awarded to local governments, Indian Tribes, Non-profit foundations and corporations, community anchor institutions, or somebody engaged in workforce development. The NTIA strongly suggests partnerships or consortiums between multiple entities. That’s clear by the size of the grant awards, which are anticipated to be between $5 million and $12 million. While grant applications of that size aren’t mandatory, anybody asking for more or less than those amounts must provide a compelling justification for their grant.
The grant process has a fairly short application window, and grants are due by September 23 for all grant applications except for territories that are due by October 22.
Grants must be spent within for years of the date of a grant award. Grant recipients will be allowed to ‘measure and support” the grant funded activities for one additional year. The NTIA warns that no grant extensions will be allowed.
These grants have been anticipated for a long time since the IIJA law was enacted on November 15, 2021. Folks throughout the industry have been wondering why it has taken so long to start issuing grants that were intended to start in 2022.