Lingering concerns about whether money from the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program will be used to fund overbuilds of other government-subsidized projects flared up again recently. Concerns seemed to center on what BEAD will mean for those receiving funding from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program. So, what do federal officials have to say about it all? Asked for clarification, an National Telecommunications and Information Administration spokesperson said that the rules for the BEAD program specify that locations may not be counted as un- or underserved if they’re “subject to an enforceable federal, state or local commitment to deploy qualifying broadband.” When it comes to RDOF specifically, locations will be considered as having an enforceable commitment if the Federal Communications Commission has authorized funding to cover them. When asked what percentage of RDOF locations might be eligible for BEAD funding, the NTIA spokesperson said  “We don’t have figures on this…[but] any overlap between the programs is minimal.”

Barbara Drӧher Kline thought she knew what she was getting into when she moved halfway across the country and bought a 1890s farmhouse in rural Le Sueur county, Minnesota. Contractors advised her to tear the house down, but she loved a fixer-upper, especially after she had refined her remodeling skills on her previous home in California, a redwood log cabin near San Francisco. Drӧher Kline wasn’t scared by a rural lifestyle either. Both she and her husband, John Kline, had roots in the state, and he had grown up nearby. The plot twist was something even HGTV had not prepared her for: slow internet. The internet service provider for her new home, Frontier Communications, offered outdated technology with frequent outages and notoriously poor customer service. Over the next two years, from 2016 to 2018, she would jump between various internet companies, trying to secure the high-speed connections she needed to work remotely. The experience even inspired her to run for state office.

In a mad scramble to verify a map that will be used to determine Colorado’s share of federal broadband funding, state officials trying to meet a Jan. 13, 2023 deadline made nearly 15,000 challenges in three weeks. The majority were accepted. Of those, about 13,000 were submitted for incorrect addresses, the wrong number of units in a building, and other inaccurate information. So far, 6,700 location challenges were accepted. But more critical were “availability” challenges submitted by the state, partly thanks to Coloradans who submitted their own protests, that provided evidence that internet service was either much slower than advertised, too expensive, or not available when ordered. An accurate Federal Communications Commission national broadband map is critical if Colorado wants every federal dollar available to improve subpar internet service for its rural and urban households. Corrections were added in 41,960 new locations between versions one and two of the national broadband map, thanks to the input from Colorado. That could translate into millions of additional dollars, said Brandy Reitter, executive director of the Colorado Broadband Office.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted the following spectrum management principles.

Interference Realities

• Interference and harmful interference are affected by the characteristics of both the transmitting service(s) and nearby receiving service(s) in frequency, space, and/or time.
• The electromagnetic environment is highly variable, and zero risk of occasional service degradation or interruption cannot be guaranteed.
• Services should plan for the spectrum environment in which they intend to operate, the service they intend to provide, and the characteristics of spectrally and spatially proximate operations. Planning should be ongoing and account for changes in spectrum operating environments.

Shared Responsibilities

• Transmitters authorized for use in a given service should be designed to minimize the amount of their transmitted energy outside of the service’s assigned frequencies and authorizations.
• Receivers authorized for use in a service should, as a general matter, be designed to mitigate interference from emissions from outside of their service’s assigned frequencies or channels.
• Radio transmitter and receiver system operators and equipment manufacturers should plan for and design error-tolerant systems, using good engineering practices, to mitigate degradation from interference.

Data-Driven Regulatory Approaches to Promote Co-Existence

• Relevant information about services’ transmitter and receiver standards, guidelines, and operating characteristics is needed to promote effective spectrum management and efficient co-existence.
• Quantitative analyses of interactions between services that are fact- and evidence-based, sufficiently robust, transparent, and reproducible are needed to better inform spectrum management decisionmaking.
• The FCC will explore, in future rulemakings, interference limits policies in particular spectrum bands to promote effective co-existence.