Effective Dig Once Policies

I know a number of counties and cities that have adopted dig once policies that require that every major road project includes burying empty conduit along new or reworked roads. A lot of them have found out that just having the policy is not enough, and that dig once is more complicated than they imagined.

It’s a common misconception that dig once just means laying conduit in the ground while roads are dug up for repaving. It’s not that easy. It turns out that most contractors who are fulfilling road construction projects are not sympathetic to any activities that delay the roadwork, so they are not particularly accommodating to a fiber construction crew. The road contractor often gets no extra compensation for working with the party laying the conduit, so they often make it hard for the conduit installers to get the work done by giving them a very short window to get the work done or requiring work to be done at night.

One way to make dig once work better would be to require road contractors to build fiber construction into their schedules. That sounds easy enough, but many road projects are funded by sources other than the local government, so getting dig once provisions into a state road project can be a major challenge.

A bigger question is who pays for the conduit. While burying conduit when the roadway is open is far less costly than normal fiber construction, it’s not free. Should the local government require the road contractor to pay for the conduit installation and build it into the road contract? I find it troubling to think about requiring a road contractor to build fiber since it’s not in their skill set.

The other primary issue with a dig once policy is placing access points – places where an ISP or carrier can get access to the conduit and fiber. Without the right access points, buried conduit can be nearly worthless. One problem is that it’s impossible to know upfront who might use the conduit in the future. Somebody who is looking for pure transport through the area won’t care about access points. But an ISP that wants to build last mile fiber will want an access point for every few potential customers – and that can be expensive, even with dig once. It’s even more complicated when trying to predict what might be along that stretch of road over the next fifty years. Since the only good time to place the access points is when the conduit is placed, somebody has to make this determination before the conduit is placed.

For a dig once policy needs to be effective, there also has to be a way to let the world know where conduit is available. This means having a website with a map of available conduit, a list of the policies that anybody that wants to use the fiber must follow, and a price determined for anybody that want to use the conduit.

Dig once sounds like a great idea, but unless conduit is placed in ways that are useful to ISPs, it will never be used. I know ISPs who have considered using government conduit and decided not to. To use a buried conduit means meeting a dig once route at both ends, and that is often not convenient or easy.

Finally, a local government that mandate dig once has to be patient. ISPs will not be rushing to incorporate random short conduit runs into their network design. Dig once only gets attractive when there are enough routes built to be of interest.

Eliminating Regulations

The FCC, under Chairman Brendan Carr, has issued a Public Notice asking for public input on eliminating regulations that create unneeded burdens or that stand in the way of the deployment, expansion, competition, or technological innovation.  The Notice is titled: ‘In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete.’

The Public Notice asks for comments of various types:

  • Cost-benefit Considerations. The FCC invites the public to comment on regulations where the cost of compliance is more than can be justified by the benefits. They ask commenters to take a stab at documenting the cost/benefit of proposed rule changes.
  • Experience Based on Implementation. This asks if some rules are too complex based on the experience of companies that must comply. Are there rules that are routinely waived because of the complexity?
  • Marketplace and Technological Changes. Have marketplace changes or new technologies made some rules obsolete?
  • Barriers to Entry. Are there regulations that act as a barrier to entry of new companies? (I must note that many such regulations are on the books at the request of monopoly providers).
  • A Broader Regulatory Context. Are there rules that are now obsolete due to later regulations that supplanted them?
  • Consideration of Court Decisions. This asks if there are regulations that might be considered in light of Supreme Court rules like Roper Bright that says that regulatory agencies shouldn’t undertake any major regulation that hasn’t been explicitly directed by Congress?

I have no doubt that every large company and lobbyist will trot out their wish list of regulations they would love to see eliminated. I have little doubt that there is somebody who dislikes every regulation on the FCC books. But there are a lot of obsolete regulations. For example, it’s ridiculous in today’s environment for the FCC to have rules about video channel lineups. There are a ton of rules on the books for technologies that are no longer in use.

It’s worth noting that the FCC already routinely ignores obsolete regulations, as do all regulatory agencies. While it’s cleaner to get old regulations off the books, it’s nearly as effective to not consider or enforce old rules that no longer apply.

The FCC also has to consider the source of various regulations. The agency does not have the authority, on it’s own, to eliminate a requirement imposed in the past by Congress. Eliminating such rules is fine as long as nobody objects, but doing so also opens the agency to lawsuits, which would be a colossal waste of time.

It’s a good idea for any regulatory agency to do this periodically as long as this is done well. This will hopefully not become an excuse to let large ISPs, wireless companies, TV and radio station owners, and others walk away from needed regulation.

What is most interesting about this effort is that Chairman Carr came into the position with a fairly long list of new regulations he’d like to see the FCC tackle. At the top of his list is a new look at the FCC’s role in regulating Section 230 related to web content.

Alternatives to GPS?

The FCC plans to hold a vote in April to consider alternatives to GPS, the U.S. location technology. The aviation industry has reported an increase in GPS spoofing, where a fake GPS signal shows a pilot the wrong location of a plane. GPS spoofing has been common around conflict zones, but airlines are reporting it happening in other places.

There are national security concerns because GPS is now used extensively by airlines, shipping, the military, and by the public for a wide range of uses. There is growing fear of the negative impact of something going wrong with GPS due to malicious attacks, technical malfunctions, or natural phenomenon like solar flares.

GPS technology was developed by the U.S. and is currently controlled by the U.S. Space Force. The technology was first designed in 1973 and became fully functional when a constellation of 24 satellites was in place in 1993. The U.S. government first made GPS available for civilian uses after Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down in 1983 when it entered Russian air space. Over time, the government allowed wider use of GPS, and the technology is familiar to everybody who uses it as the basis for driving directions.

We’ve already begun to modernize the GPS network. There are currently 18 new GPS satellites in orbit that use the L5 frequency band that can provide accuracy for functions like surveying within 2 centimeters. The new satellite constellation will be completed in 2024 when it reaches 24 satellites.

GPS is not the only location network in the world. Russia has a GLONASS network, China a BeiDou network, and the European Union operates its Galileo locating network.

The purpose of GPS is supply geolocation information and the time anywhere on earth. Folks in the telecom business are familiar with GPS because we use it to mark the location of network outdoor components. GPS can help to lead a technician directly to the source of a network problem.

The FCC wants to open an exploration into other locating technologies so that we aren’t dependent on the GPS satellites. There are alternatives to GPS that can be explored, and it seems likely that a second locating system would be used in conjunction with GPS so that there wouldn’t be a single network providing the service. Some of the alternate technologies that might be considered include:

  • GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System). LORAN (Long Range Navigation) technology is already used in conjunction with current GPS. This is a land-based network that use low-frequency radios that allow a calculation of position. Today LORAN supplements GPS in areas where reception is poor, and it can enhance accuracy where GPS is being used. Some are proposing that an updated eLORAN network be built as more extensive alternative to GPS. The downside is the cost of build a large numbers of LORAN towers around the world.
  • INS (Inertial Navigation System) is a self-contained system that keeps track of the location of an INS device through continuous motion tracking – the device constantly calculates where it is at. The technology is already used today in airplanes, ships, and by the military. The devices are fairly expensive but could become more affordable with mass production. The downside is what is called sensor drift where a device has to occasionally be recalibrated by connecting to GPS or another location system.
  • Quantum Clocks are still in the research and development phase but hold promise for timekeeping and location calculations. Quantum clocks are far more accurate than the atomic clock that is currently used as our time standard. The lab devices today are complex, and the challenge to make this into a usable technology is miniaturization and mass production.

Google’s Next Generation of Light-based Broadband

Mahesh Krishnaswamy of Alphabet X announced the development of its next generation of light-based broadband transmission. Google uses the brand name Taara for the technology. Google has already deployed the first generation of the technology in hundreds of high-speed light links around the world, in places where it was impractical or too expensive to install fiber.

The new breakthrough being announced is that Google has reduced the technology to a chip. The first generation device used a complicated set of movable mirrors to steer the light signal, but the new chip does this electronically. The first generation device was the size of a traffic-light, but the new one is described as being the size of a fingernail.

The new chip uses light that is below the visible range. Each chip contains hundreds of tiny light emitters, and the software can control each individually with great precision. Lab tests of the chip have been able to deliver 10 Gbps speed for about a kilometer. Google believes the practical distance for the technology will be as far as about twelve miles, carrying up to 20 Gbps. Google hopes to make the chip commercially available in 2026.

It’s not hard to envision uses for the technology. One of the first trials was to beam data across the Congo River, where fiber was not a practical alternative. I can think of dozens of places in fiber networks where light-beams could be a huge cost-saver. Picture using this technology to connect to rural homes that are set back from the road. This could solve the cost and delays of crossing bridges and railroad tracks. This seems like a natural technology to use in cities to create a network between buildings. Bring a 100 GB fiber connection to one tall building and serve multiple other buildings without additional fiber.

The concept of using light for data transmission has been around for a decade, generally described under the general term Li-Fi. The primary vision for Li-Fi has been an indoor technology for beaming superfast broadband within the home of office. There was also talk about using Li-Fi as the best way to communicate between cars on the road. A few companies have developed Li-Fi devices, but the technology never gained any serious traction in the market. There has been a lot of research on Li-Fi technology by the military for providing fast broadband on the battlefield.

There are several natural limitations for using light to send data, particularly outdoors. Light requires a pure line of sight and is deflected by trees and bushes. Outdoor events like rain, fog, snow, and birds will disrupt the signal. Just like with radio signals, light dissipates over distance, and the signal gets weaker as the distance between transmitter and receiver increases. Google says it is working on ways to minimize the impact of weather. Indoor use would require deploying multiple devices to see into each room where you want broadband – no closed doors allowed.

The real benefit for this technology comes if Google can make the chips affordable. It’s not hard to envision a light mesh network delivering gigabit speeds to a small town without the need to build a wired network. Nobody has light-based broadband networks on their broadband bingo card – but in a few years it might become a viable option.

Government Restriction of Broadband

It’s probably a testament to how important broadband is when governments shut down or threaten to shut down broadband access for political reasons. This blog was prompted by a news report that Ontario tore up a contract with Starlink as a result of the announced  U.S. tariffs against Canadian goods. Even just a few years ago, it was probably unimaginable that broadband would have been mentioned in any talks about trade between countries.

That announcement prompted me to look to see what other governments have been using broadband connectivity as a political tool. I found Internet shutdowns in 2024: a global overview by Surfshark. This report covers not only total shut downs, but also restrictions imposed by governments in response to political unrest, protests, or social issues.

There are a number of countries that have long-term restrictions on Internet access. Eritrea and North Korea have a nearly total Internet ban. Iran, Cuba, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Saudi Arabia block social media platforms. The United Arab Emirate (UAE) has laws against online criticism of the government and arrests people for online content. China is famous for the Great Firewall of China, and closely watches Internet content. Egypt and Tunisia monitor online content and emails.

Some countries block specific apps. Russia banned Discord and Signal. Turkey blocked Discord after the company refused to share information with the government. This followed an incident where a man murdered two women, and users on Discord praised the killing. The U.S. almost joined this list with a threatened ban of TikTok.

Some Internet shutdowns are traditional and scheduled. For example, the Telegram messaging app is turned off every year in Kenya to prevent cheating during the tests for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education. Pakistan, Senegal, and Mauritius restricted the Internet last year during elections.

Unfortunately, most other temporary Internet shutdowns are not so benign. India had the most Internet restrictions during the year with 23 incidents. Thirteen of the restrictions were to try to quell and restrict protests, like a farmers’ protest in Punjab. Ten were related to political turmoil, like violence in Saran after the polls closed.

Turkey blocks broadband four times during 2024. There was a total block of social media platforms for 24 hours following an attack on the Turkish Aerospace Industries headquarters.

Bangladesh had a near-total shutdown of the Internet after student protests. There has been an ongoing block of WhatsApp and Facebook related to protests against the Prime Minister.

Mozambique had restrictions for the first time and shut down broadband after protests related to a disputed election.

Overall, there were slightly fewer incidents of government restrictions in 2024 than in 2023. In my mind, the shutdowns are evidence of the power of the Internet. It’s likely that governments that want to control their citizens will continue use Internet shutdowns.

Deprioritized Broadband

There is an interesting trend of ISPs selling broadband products that are not always guaranteed to be at the same speed and quality as other customers.

Throttling customer speeds is not new to the industry. Some of the companies that with long-time data caps throttle data to slow speeds after a customer reaches the monthly allowance of usage. Most such ISPs offer an alternative for customers to buy extra broadband to maintain their normal speeds. Some of the companies that have had this practice include the high-orbit satellite providers, cell carriers providing hotspot plans, and a handful of others. Many companies with data plans don’t throttle speeds and just automatically bill more for going over the data cap.

I’ve noted this practice again in recent years from the big FWA cellular providers that sell home broadband using cellular spectrum. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have all reserved the right to throttle customers any time that the network gets too busy. For example, from the terms from T-Mobile, “During network congestion, some T-Mobile internet customers might notice slower speeds, including Home Internet customers” Home Internet is the FWA home broadband product.

I’ve been able to observe examples of them doing this. I’ve seen speed tests from customers using FWA that have speeds over 200 Mbps during the year who occasionally get throttled down to just a few Mbps. I think these customers are surprised every time this happens and probably don’t understand or remember that the throttling is a part of the terms they agreed to.

It’s easy to understand why cellular companies would throttle home broadband customer first – they are protecting their cellular customers. I’m sure all of the FWA providers are happy with the new revenues coming from FWA, but T-Mobile is not going to let the home broadband for 6.4 million FWA customers threaten the experience of 130 cellular customers.

Starlink also throttles certain customers. One of the features of Starlink’s Away plan for campers and hikers is that Starlink reserves the right to throttle data usage if the network gets too busy. It’s also easy to understand this. As the RV products becomes more successful, it’s not hard to imagine a lot of campers coming together at the same location wanting to connect to Starlink. That traffic alone could overload a particular satellite, but Starlink is also shielding its customers who live in the same region and who are paying full price.

Starlink also reserves the right to throttle customers who buy its new ‘Residential Lite’ product for $80 per month. Rather than mention throttling, Starlink calls it deprioritization, “This service plan will be deprioritized compared to Residential service during peak hours. This means speeds may be slower for Residential Lite service relative to Residential service when our network has the most users online”. This term is at the top of the company’s advertising for the product, and they want customers who want the lower rate to recognize what comes with the plan. The company is making it clear that there are trade-offs for getting the lower price.

I’ve been thinking about all of these plans and net neutrality. One of the key features of the national net neutrality plan was that ISPs couldn’t engage in paid prioritization, meaning that a customer could not be charged more to be guaranteed a better connection.

It’s not clear to me that this practice violates that principle. In the case of the FWA products, every customer buying the FWA product runs the risk of having data throttled – there is no other class of customers with higher priority unless it’s cellphone customers. Starlink is a little different in that customers can save money by agreeing to possibly be throttled. Is having customers agree save money by being deprioritized the same as charging somebody else more to get a better priority?

It certainly doesn’t matter at the federal level since the Courts recently killed the appeal to the FCC’s net neutrality case – and the FCC would have killed net neutrality anyway if the Courts didn’t do it. It is a more germane question in California which adopted a state net neutrality plan that largely mimics the federal rules.

Altice in the News

We haven’t heard a lot of bad news about ISPs lately since most are doing well financially. One of the most troubled ISPs in the news for the last several years has been Altice. There were rumors in the financial press recently that the company has been working with creditors to restructure its $25 billion in debt to avoid bankruptcy.

Altice USA is led by Patrick Drahi, who also owns Altice France. The America company spun off into a separate corporation in 2018. The American company was formed in 2016 from the acquisition and merger of Suddenlink Communications and Cablevision. The combined companies had about 4.6 million broadband customers at the time, making them the fourth largest cable company after Comcast, Charter, and Cox.

It’s been clear for years that anybody who watches the ISP market that Altice USA has been struggling. In 2016 the company announced it was going to convert all of its cable DOCSIS networks to fiber, making it the first cable company to fully pursue that upgrade. However, the fiber upgrades quickly slowed down. In 2024, Altice added 210,000 fiber passings to bring reach 3 million fiber passings out of its total of 9.8 million passings. During this slow transition, the companies older DOCSIS 3.0 networks have been falling behind expected performance and the company has been losing broadband subscribers. Since the end of 2022, the company shed about 6% of its broadband customers, with only Lumen doing worse among the largest ISPs.

The company also has struggled with customer service and has fallen to near the bottom in the national rankings of public satisfaction with ISPs. Earlier this year, the company reached a $119.5 million settlement with West Virginia related to complaints about the company’s quality of service. That settlement included roughly $3 million in fines, $4 million in customer refunds, and the rest pledged for broadband improvements. If the improvements aren’t in place by the end of 2027 there will be an additional $40 million fine.

But the big albatross for the company has been the giant bond payments coming due. I’ve been reading Wall Street analysts for several years who have predicted the eventual bankruptcy of the company. It was clear in looking at the annual reports a few years ago that the company would have a huge problem in restructuring billions in debt in an environment where any new loans have a higher interest rate than the old ones.

There was a rumor a year ago that Charter was thinking about buying or merging with Altice, but that never materialized.

Altice France is also in the news. The company recently reached an agreement with lenders to convert outstanding debt into equity. Various lenders held more than $25 billion in Altice debt. The two primary lenders took 45% equity in the company. For that equity, the lenders will forgive $9 billion in debt and extend the remaining debt maturities into the future. The new creditor/owners will get two seats on the Board. This doesn’t necessarily leave Altice in a strong position since it will still be saddled with $16 billion in future debt. For those not aware of the structure of many corporate bonds, the typical terms include a big balloon payment at the end. During the life of the bond, the borrower pays interest only with no principal payments.

World Internet Trends in 2025

DataReportal recently released its Digital 2025: Global Overview Report that looks at the state of the Internet worldwide.

The world population at the end of 2024 was 8.20 billion, up 70 million from a year earlier, a growth rate of 0.9%.

There were 5.78 billion unique mobile subscribers in January, up 112 million (2.0%) over a year earlier.

5.56 billion people are using the Internet at the start of 2025, up 136 million (2.5%) from a year earlier. This means more than two-thirds of the people on the planet are connecting to the web.

The average landline broadband speeds worldwide were 95.1 Mbps down and 51.5 Mbps up. The average worldwide cellular data speeds were 61.5 Mbps down and 11.6 Mbps up.

5.24 billion people used social media, up 200 million (4%) from a year earlier.

The most popular social media sites in the world are:

  • YouTube 2.53 billion
  • Facebook 2.28 billion
  • Instagram 1.74 billion
  • TikTok 1.59 billion
  • LinkedIn 1.20 billion
  • Facebook Messenger 947 million
  • Snapchat 709 million
  • Reddit 605 million
  • X 586 million
  • Pinterest 340 million

The most popular uses of the Internet (percentage of people who use each function)

  • 1 – Chat and Messaging 94.5%
  • 2 – Social Media 94.4%
  • 3 – Search 82.3 %
  • 4 – Shopping 74.9 %
  • 5 – Email 75.0%
  • 6 – Location services / Maps 55.3%
  • 7 – Music 47.7%
  • 8 – Entertainment 46.0%
  • 9 – Weather 43.6%
  • 10 – News 41.4%

The average time per person using the Internet was 6 hours 38 minutes, down 2 minutes from a year earlier. This means the world spends a combined 870 trillion minutes using the Internet in 2024. The average time spend watching video (Online and TV) is 3 hours 13 minutes.

Online ads now represent 70% of all advertising dollars. Worldwide, $1.1 trillion was spent on online ads in 2023, up $75 billion over the previous year. $790.3 billion of that spending was done on digital search sites and social media.

Ecommerce is huge worldwide. 54 billion people purchased something online in 2024. Total online spending for goods was $4.12 trillion.

Proposed BEAD Legislation

We got a peek at how the BEAD grants might be modified when Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina introduced the Streamlining Program Efficiency and Expanding Deployment (SPEED) for BEAD Act. Note that these are just proposed changes to BEAD and other changes are not off the table. Many of these changes undo direct requirements from Congress in the original BEAD legislation.

A lot of the changes are largely cosmetic and what the regulatory world refers to as ‘packing peanuts’, meaning the changes make a policy statement but have almost no impact on making the BEAD grant awards. This includes:

  • Changes the acronym for BEAD from ‘Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment” to ‘Broadband Expansion, Access, and Deployment’.
  • Eliminating topics from the grant application that most ISPs were giving lip service to anyway. ISPs may still care about these topics, but they would no longer be a requirement for States to consider when choosing grant winners. This Act would eliminate consideration for:
    • Diversity, inclusion, and equity
    • A long list of labor requirements including an emphasis on union wages, prevailing wages, workforce composition, and a labor peace agreement.
    • How a new network would address climate change.
    • Grant points for offering open access.
    • Regulation of network management practices, including data caps.

The proposed legislation has a few items of more significant impact that most ISPs will like:

  • Allows ISPs to remove high cost locations from BEAD proposals. Most states have drawn arbitrary required service areas, and this lets an ISP remove location that add too much cost. Presumably those locations would default to a satellite or some other technology.
  • While BEAD would maintain the requirement to offer at least one low-cost broadband plan, states would not be allowed to regulate or otherwise mandate or set such rates or require rates to be capped or frozen for future years.

There are a few major proposed changes:

  • Any unspent BEAD funds would be returned to Treasury. States will be pleased to see that the Act leaves Non-Deployment Funds alone – many feared those would be yanked. Originally, unused funds were to be redistributed to states that didn’t get enough funding. This is bad news for States that hoped to get more.
  • One of the biggest changes is that BEAD funding can’t be used to fund digital inclusion and adoption activities. Funds can still be used for telecom workforce development.

The biggest change is the one we’ve all been waiting for – there would no longer be any preference for fiber, and any broadband technology that meets the speed and latency requirements is eligible for BEAD funding. Of course, this doesn’t answer the big question of what that means. Might this mean that 10% or 20% of BEAD would go to satellite technology, or even most or all of it? As much as folks want an answer to this question, it’s likely to be a while until rules get that specific. That final direction is likely to come from the NTIA in the form of new instructions on how to choose grant winners.

While the proposed Act has the acronym SPEED, it seems inevitable that any changes by Congress or NTIA will require states that have already made BEAD awards, or the many that are currently scoring grants, to start the grant award process over. Some folks have speculated changes could delay BEAD for another year, but I expect many states will be able to make the pivot more quickly.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently said he plans to make similar changes and probably others. I don’t understand enough about the new dynamics in DC to know if NTIA can make significant changes unilaterally or if they would want the cover provided by this legislation. The bill undoes provisions that Congress created in the original BEAD legislation, and it seems like Congress ought to be the ones to change them. But Commerce might feel they have the authority to make changes. I guess we’ll find out soon.

Regulatory Shorts March 2025

The industry is awash with regulatory changes, and I’ll likely be writing more blogs like this listing some of the changes that impact small ISPs.

Supreme Court Refuses Second Review of NY Low Rates. ISPs were irate when the Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal case against the State of New York that requires ISPs with more than 20,000 customers to provide broadband for as little as $15 per month for qualifying low-income households. The ISPs scrambled and asked the Court a second time to take the case, and the Court declined for a second time. The law is already in effect in the state. Several other states, like California, Massachusetts, and Vermont, are now considering similar legislation.

Feds Talk About Fixing Permits on Public Lands – Again. There was a lot of talk in DC recently about finally fixing issues that make it slow and painful to get a permit to build fiber or other telecom infrastructure on federal land. My recollection is that the last three administrations took a swing at the issue, and yet there has been little meaningful improvement. We’ll have to see if the fourth time is the charm.

One-to-One Consent Law Vacated. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a ruling from the FCC that could have resulted in far fewer robocalls. In December 2023, the FCC passed a rule that required anybody who wants to call a consumer to have a one-on-one relationship with the called party, meaning the consumer had to either be an existing customer or give explicit permission to be called.

The law was passed because of a practice where marketing companies asks consumers for permission to be called by it or its ‘partners’. Companies that get callers to agree to this expanded permission then sell the lists to the other calling companies for a fee. The buyers of the list then act as if they have permission to call.

FCC Authority to Auction Spectrum? The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing under Chairman Senator Ted Cruz on February 19 to discuss the topic. There seemed to be bipartisan support for the idea of renewing the FCC’s auction authority. The FCC says that releasing new spectrum for cellular is one of its top priorities.

Tax Free BEAD Funding. Currently, any grant funding given to an ISP creates a taxable event, which means a huge tax penalty for any taxable entity that accepts a BEAD or other grant. I know ISPs who stayed out of BEAD because of this issue. A bipartisan group of Senators reintroduced the Broadband Grant Tax Treatment Act on February 24, which would make the proceeds from infrastructure grants non-taxable. The IRS used to be able to make the taxable/non-taxable decision, but that ability lapsed due to provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

A New Twist on BEAD. Louisiana got approval from NTIA on January 13 for the broadband grants the state wants to make from the BEAD grant program. It turns out that there is an additional step before Louisiana can tell ISPs to move forward, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) also has to give a go-ahead for the funds to be released. That’s a delay that nobody built into their BEAD timelines – and Louisiana and other states are still waiting for NIST approval.