Cities and counties need to prepare for broadband construction as BEAD monies flow to the public sector

More funding is coming online to expand broadband access in the United States. Broadband, which is the transmission of wide bandwidth data over a high-speed internet connection, is getting a boost from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The legislation set up the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, which provides $42.45 billion for states, territories and the District of Columbia to use for broadband deployment, mapping and adoption projects. The first funding priority under the BEAD program is to provide broadband to unserved areas; this includes locations that have telecommunications service speeds below 25 Mbps (megabits per second) download and 3 Mbps upload.

“With the billions in BEAD funding coming to states over the next year, state broadband offices will need to work with their county and local governments, who will be bidding on these funds for high-speed fiber broadband infrastructure,” says Heather Gold, vice president, external affairs at Mears Broadband, which provides construction and engineering services throughout North America, as well as broadband capabilities.

Gold notes that construction makes up about 70 percent of fiber broadband deployment costs. She urges BEAD sub-grant recipients to get boots-on-the-ground counsel from construction partners early in the planning and design phase. The reason: “Those partners can help to mitigate topographical impediments and unique community challenges that can potentially derail a network implementation.” Mears Broadband specializes in fiber broadband infrastructure. The firm has worked with scores of communities in more than 20 states.

As BEAD funding starts to stimulate increased broadband planning and construction, some industry experts predict an increased need for workers skilled in several tasks, such as the ability to read and understand complicated maps showing all the existing underground facilities near a broadband installation site, and the ability to operate equipment for trenching, earth-drilling and wire-cable placement on poles.

Mears is training needed personnel as BEAD funding materializes. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Quanta Services. The latter firm operates a dedicated 2,200-acre campus in Texas for training of telecommunications and construction personnel.

Gold spotlights the following attributes of successful broadband deployments. Her firm learned them as it constructed broadband networks over the past four years:

1. Organization
   Identify groups of citizens in leadership positions that can support the implementation project. “While it is also important to have key elected officials, such as a mayor or county executive leading the charge, communities should also be seeking buy-in from key stakeholders, such as heads of economic development, school system superintendents, civic groups, libraries and especially community leaders who can see the benefits of your infrastructure project.”
2. Poll the Public & Rally Support
   Gold says the second step communities need to take is to make sure they have polled the public and sufficiently communicated what is being proposed, why it is being proposed and how it will affect/benefit the community in the short term and long term. She says Kansas City’s work with Google Fiber to market “Fiberhoods” offers a great model of how infrastructure projects should be rolled out to the community. “Without community buy-in up front, your infrastructure project will be fraught with obstacles and phone calls from inconvenienced uninformed constituents.”
3. Inventory Assets & Identify/Enable Resources
   Gold urges local governments to inventory their existing assets to understand what is already in place. She believes that step will help expedite project implementation. “A critical piece of constructing a fiber broadband network entails running fiber cable either aerially on existing utility poles or trenching to lay fiber cables underground. If construction crews know in advance where all the utility poles are, for example, they can be ready to go with their permitting process. In either case, municipalities must get their rights of way, locates (gas, water, sewer lines), and permitting processes identified and enabled to ramp up and avoid costly delays. Having good data, systems, and sufficient resources in place to expedite permitting and access to rights of way will streamline the process, saving time and money on your broadband construction project.” She notes that a few states, including Colorado, Georgia and Indiana, have already initiated “Community Readiness” programs where communities can attest that they have completed these kinds of actions and are ready to commence construction.
4. Communicate
   Gold says public outreach is critical, especially after the initial proposal phase has been brought to the community and construction is about to begin. “It is vital to maintain a continuous drumbeat of communication within the community, so they know what is happening, when and where, in advance. No one wants to wake up to find a trench in front of their home. Avoiding surprises in the community is key to preserving project buy-in.”

Mears Broadband President Trent Edwards says his firm has seen small towns and cities team up, collaborate and combine resources on broadband projects in specific regions. This approach, he says, can aid in making a good business case for a particular community broadband project. “Historically, we haven’t seen a lot of cooperation because of competing interests,” he says. “But there’s an opportunity for municipal areas to come together in a cluster approach that I think makes a lot of sense.”

Gold says cooperative contracts can offer significant advantages to public entities that use them. “Cooperative contracts save time and streamline the process because they are preapproved for state and local government purchase. That is a big advantage in terms of cutting down the amount of bid time, implementation time and the contract review process.” She notes that the contracts can take a variety of forms. One example would be an organization that comes in with a start-to-finish partnership, which entails engineering, construction, equipment and maintenance. “There are other entities, such as Omnia Partners, which have a prequalified buying consortium that lists members with whom localities can partner as part of an expedited contract review.”

Gold believes that cooperative buying, in general, will help incentivize major players to come into an area. “As an example, Mears recommends that multiple adjacent communities come together as a regional cluster to submit their bids, regardless of individual ownership models. This would enable larger companies, like Mears, to justify the labor and operations investment required for one build or multiple and permit more rural communities to gain quicker access to high quality affordable high speed fiber broadband deployment.”

OMNIA Partners offers a robust portfolio of cooperative contracts in the public procurement space, and OMNIA Partners Public Sector lists dozens of cooperative contracts under the keyword “broadband.”

Michael Keating is senior editor for American City & County. Contact him at [email protected].