The Eliminating Barriers to Rural Internet Development Grant Eligibility (E-BRIDGE) Act, was signed into law in early January as part of the ‘larger Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act of 2024 (S. 4367).

This bill authorizes the Economic Development Administration (EDA), which is part of the Department of Commerce, to award economic development grants to public-private partnerships or related consortiums to implement broadband infrastructure projects. The goal of any funded project must be to provide, extend, expand, or improve high-speed broadband service through (1) planning, technical assistance, or training; (2) land acquisition or development; or (3) acquisition, construction, or improvement of facilities.

Then grants must be used in underserved markets. EDA doesn’t necessarily use the same definition that is used for other grants like BEAD where unserved refers to the speed of existing broadband. Instead, the EDA definition of underserved means communities where a lot of people don’t have broadband.

It’s not a large grant program. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that about six projects will qualify in the first year, with the number of projects climbing to fifteen in 2028. CBO estimates that the average award will be about $1.5 million per project. For anybody who has ever worked with EDA broadband grants, this estimated timeline shows the typically long process to get EDA funding. These grants aren’t obtained by a competitive process. Instead, ideas for new projects bubble up from the economic development agencies in communities where EDA is already engaged in other work.

As the expected size of the grants show, the projects funded from these grants will not be used to build large broadband networks. Instead, the broadband will likely be part of projects that are bringing a new factory or building low-income homes.

EDA has been awarding broadband grants for many years. The grants always are awarded in communities with high levels of poverty or that are considered to be economically distressed. That doesn’t always mean rural areas and EDA often works in towns that have a locally bad economy.

The change made by this new law allows EDA to work directly with public-private partnerships on projects. In the past, EDA had to work directly with communities, and those communities often had to do legal gymnastics to include a private ISP in a project. Under this new law, EDA can award funding directly to public-private partnerships, and those entities can own the constructed networks. This should make it a lot easier for communities to find projects that can be successful.

While this is a relatively small program, it hopefully reminds folks that broadband grant funding is not going to end with BEAD. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I predict there will still be millions of rural homes without broadband after the dust of BEAD and RDOF settle. Programs like this, and perhaps a newly funded ReConnect grant program will hopefully tackle some of the areas that are left behind. The bigger hope is that States will step up with grants to finally close the rural digital divide. Many State grant programs existed before BEAD, and state legislators are likely to pay attention to constituents who still don’t have broadband.