When U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., fought to include billions in funding in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill for nationwide broadband expansion, she had no idea five years later that zero dollars would be spent. But finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel.<\/p>\n
West Virginia is poised, again, to be one of the first handful of states to submit its final proposal for the U.S. Department of Commerce\u2019s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.<\/p>\n
The public comment window for West Virginia\u2019s BEAD proposal closed last week, with the final proposal being sent to the NTIA by Thursday, Sept. 4. That will trigger a 90-day comment period at the federal level before the NTIA can approve or recommend changes to the proposal.<\/p>\n
The BEAD Program, established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) with Capito heavily involved in the negotiations with former president Joe Biden, allocated more than $42 billion to expand high-speed broadband access across the United States. West Virginia was awarded $1.2 billion by the NTIA in 2023.<\/p>\n
West Virginia was one of three states ahead in the BEAD application process and prepared to send its final proposal back in April. But Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced in March that West Virginia was granted a 90-day extension to submit the state\u2019s final BEAD grant proposal.<\/p>\n
The BEAD program was placed on a pause at the beginning of March by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick while the program was being reviewed. The program was accused of favoring some technologies over others, being bogged down by cumbersome regulations and red tape, and being high in cost.<\/p>\n
Capito placed the bulk of the blame for the slowdown of the BEAD program on the Biden administration, which she said allowed red tape to keep the program from quickly pushing out broadband and the change in administration once President Donald Trump took office for a second term.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking at almost four to five years,\u201d Capito said by phone Friday. \u201cThis money has been promised, this $1.2 billion investment into West Virginia, and not a dollar has flowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to talk about bureaucracy and regulation and morass? We were right at the edge of being able to get our money when the changeover in the administrations occurred,\u201d Capito told attendees Thursday at the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce 89ths Annual Meeting and Business Summit at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs. \u201cThey decided to put a hold, like they put a hold on a lot of things\u2026So now, the new deadline is September.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the state\u2019s BEAD draft final proposal, the West Virginia Office of Broadband within the state Department of Commerce will award $625 million of the $1.2 billion BEAD grant to nine provisional subgrantees to expand high-speed broadband to nearly 74,000 locations across the state.<\/p>\n
According to reporting by Mountain State Spotlight, the number of locations was reduced between the state\u2019s earlier BEAD proposal and the updated BEAD proposal, from 114,000 locations to the 74,000 number due to a reclassification of locations. The funding is meant to expand broadband access to unserved and underserved locations across the state.<\/p>\n
If the state\u2019s BEAD proposal is approved, the majority of the $625 million would go to Bridgeport-based Citynet ($229.2 million), Frontier Communications ($209.3 million), and Comcast ($61.3 million).<\/p>\n
The remainder of the funding would be divided between smaller regional internet service providers: Micrologic, GigaBeam, Prodigi Internet, Armstrong, and Hardy Telecommunications. The smallest award \u2014 $6.4 million \u2014 will go to Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink, a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet service provider.<\/p>\n
\u201cWest Virginia\u2019s lagged in terms of broadband Internet for too long,\u201d Morrisey told Business Summit attendees Thursday. \u201cThe good news is, thanks to a lot of the work, the people that came before me, and our federal representatives, the State of West Virginia is now in the final stages of its BEAD application\u2026That has the ability to be a true gamechanger in the Mountain State.\u201d<\/p>\n
During an afternoon break last Thursday during the Chamber\u2019s Business Summit, Capito was joined by NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth for a closed-door roundtable with offices with the state Office of Broadband, members of the Broadband Enhancement Council, lawmakers, and representatives of ISPs and utilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter years of delays by the Biden administration, NTIA is proud to be moving forward on the BEAD program and delivering the \u2018Benefit of the Bargain\u2019 for Americans,\u201d Roth said in a statement Thursday. \u201cIt was an honor to join Senator Capito and local stakeholders to discuss the next stage of the program and NTIA\u2019s commitment to closing connectivity gaps in West Virginia once and for all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were face-to-face making the case very strongly that we\u2019re backing up the (BEAD) application,\u201d Capito said. \u201cAdministrator Roth, on her first official visit for the BEAD program, came to West Virginia to hear our concerns. We\u2019re very excited about that and so, we\u2019re looking forward to having those 74,000 locations served as quickly as possible once we get this application and proposal approved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Broadband expansion has been a priority for Capito both as a former congresswoman and after becoming a U.S. Senator in 2015, creating the Capito Connect program. Capito Connect is aimed at educating the public about the benefits of broadband access for homes and businesses, the need for public-private partnerships and expanding broadband, and the need for creative solutions to bring broadband to a state known for its mountainous terrain and hollers.<\/p>\n
Capito has been a proponent of fiber broadband for its reliability. But changes in the BEAD program under the Trump administration favor LEO services, such as Starlink. But Capito said the variety of companies that will receive BEAD money in the state, including Starlink, will provide options for West Virginians depending on their locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if you combine satellite, the large players, but also the GigaBeams and the Micrologics and others, we need them all,\u201d Capito said. \u201cEverybody\u2019s pretty much on the same page. They\u2019re not knocking heads competing with one another. They\u2019re just trying to get to the same goal of completion of broadband delivery.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the fourth ranking member of Senate Republican majority leadership and chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Capito is hoping to use her influence to push through an energy and infrastructure permitting reform package through Congress before the end of the year. Part of that would involve removing red tape to allow fiber to be installed along with future infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s energy development, whether it\u2019s housing, whether it\u2019s transportation, whether it\u2019s water systems\u2026the timelines, the expense, the repetitiveness, the bureaucratic red tape that exists right now prevents projects for moving forward,\u201d Capito said. \u201cFor the broadband area, this is really, really important.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s right-of-way issues,\u201d Capito explained. \u201cThere are some (issues) where we already have the right-of-way, and if you\u2019re just going to lay fiber where there\u2019s already a highway, why do we have to jump through all the hoops? So, permitting reform is really something that we\u2019re working on every day very diligently. It has to be bipartisan and it has to be reasonable, but it will help these broadband projects for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., fought to include billions in funding in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[174,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-130903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}