There seems to be an increasing chance that the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program is back in play. In a status report filed by the Department of Commerce in the lawsuit where NDIA filed to reinstate the grant program, the government said it is targeting a December 2026 opening date for applications for the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program. Like everything associated with BEAD and the Digital Equity Grant programs, nothing is final until this is put in place. We’ve seen NTIA slow-roll the grant process at every turn.

As a reminder, the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program will be administered and the grants awarded directly by NTIA. The budget for this grant program is $1.25 billion, which was set by legislation to be $250 million per year for the years 2022 through 2026. 5% of the total funding is reserved for Native Entities, and 1% is set aside for territories. The original IIJA legislation had also included $1.44 billion to go to the State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program. 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.

NTIA had launched the Competitive Grant Program in 2024, with $750 million in grants. There were roughly 700 applicants to the program, and near the end of 2024 NTIA announced a number of award winners. This included a $7.7 million grant to Land of Sky Regional Council for my region of western North Carolina. The administration canceled both programs in May 2024. They said the grants were illegal since they included race as one of the categories to consider when using the grant funding.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance sued the administration over the cancellation, and there were negotiations between the two sides and the Court that led to this reinstatement of the Competitive Grant Program. The reconstituted grants will remove all reference to race as part of the use of the grants.

Assuming that NTIA meets the December date to open the grant window, it seems almost certain that every application to the grants will have to be refiled. But hopefully, the full $1.25 billion of funding would be open for applicants.

NTIA said it is currently preparing a new Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the coming rounds of grants. This is the document that defines the application process for the grants. If the experience of the big changes made to the BEAD grant program is any indication, there could be big changes. NTIA completely rewrote the BEAD grant program with the Benefit of the Bargain rules, and it won’t shock anybody if the rules for the Competitive Grant Program change as well.

There has been no word out of NTIA about releasing the State Digital Equity Capacity Grant funding to States. It would seem logical that as long as the same changes are made to remove reference to race, these grants could be released. But there has been nothing logical about the entire pile of funding that came from the IIJA.

There is still a big question about whether the funding for both programs is included in the 2027 federal budget? As is typical with Congress, budget bills are being punted down the road, and there is no telling when there will be an actual budget for Commerce. The Administration recommended killing this funding for 2027, and we’ll have to wait and see what comes out of the budget process. It’s conceivable that the grants will be killed through the backdoor of the budget process, which would undo anything Commerce is agreeing to now.

At least half of this mess is due to the slowness of NTIA since 2020. The funding for these grants was supposed to start flowing in 2022, and the first grant applications were submitted in September 2024. Half of this money should have already been awarded and in use before the programs were canceled in 2025. I’ve never heard any good story why NTIA took so long to launch a fairly straightforward grant program.