On May 19, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced the availability of $288 million in grant funding for the deployment of broadband infrastructure. Grants will be awarded to partnerships between a state, or political subdivisions of a state, and providers of fixed broadband service. NTIA’s Broadband Infrastructure Program was established by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021.

The application deadline for these grants is August 17, 2021. In the priority order defined by the Act, NTIA will accept applications for projects that are designed to:
1. Provide broadband service to the greatest number of households in an eligible service area;
2. Provide broadband service to rural areas;
3. Be most cost-effective in providing broadband service; or
4. Provide broadband service with a download speed of at least 100 Mbps and an upload speed of at least 20 Mbps.

NTIA will group applications based on the priority above that each application addresses. It will sequence its review of application groups in the statutory order listed above.
More information about the program, including requirements for grant applications, can be found in the Notice of Funding Opportunity published today on grants.gov. View Opportunity | GRANTS.GOV

NTIA is also holding a series of webinars to further inform the public about the program. The next Broadband Infrastructure webinars will be held on June 9 and 10. Links to these webinars can be found here. Events | BroadbandUSA (doc.gov)

If you are having trouble accessing these NTIA links from this Forum message, you can access them by copying the links from this message and pasting them with formatting into a separate document.

Source: Wispa.org, Louis Peraertz