ELKO — As part of the federal government’s Internet for All project, which aims to connect Americans to affordable high-speed internet, a special program will bring high-speed internet to Nevada homes and businesses through local-level partnerships. Masu.
“We created a set of program rules,” Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program Director Evan Fineman said in a phone interview from his Washington office. “These rules create very broad guardrails. And states have an opportunity to chart their own paths among those guardrails in a way that makes sense to them.”
Elko’s Anthem Broadband installs the internet infrastructure.
Provided by Anthem Broadband
He said the program is “not a top-down federal program that just picks winners and losers.”
“Rather, this is a partnership between the federal and state governments that will bridge the digital divide and ensure every American home and business has access to affordable, reliable, high-speed internet connectivity. ”
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The program will work with states to develop reasonable plans that follow the rule’s guardrails, he said.
The nation then implements its plan and carries out two large-scale operations. The first is a challenge process to amend the state’s FCC internet access map. “This appeals process is a way for states to determine what is correctly classified and what is incorrectly classified on state maps,” Feinman said.
“In fact, Nevada is currently in the middle of that process,” he added. “There is now an urgent need for citizens to ensure that their homes, businesses, or both are accurately represented on maps.”
examine the map
He said of Mr. Elko: “Readers should look at the FCC’s map and verify that the map accurately indicates whether they have access to high-speed internet connectivity. If not, local governments should notify their state broadband authority. We need to let the local authorities know about it right away so they can do it.”
Nevada residents can submit a challenge at beadregister.nv.gov.
“Once the state broadband authority has identified all the areas that need service, it will select grant recipients.” In other words, “we give the grant to Nevada, and then Nevada “We make grants. Our grants to Nevada were just over $416 million,” he said.
“The state will then award grants to private partners, which are internet service providers, to build networks for the approximately 50,000 homes and businesses in Nevada that do not have access to the internet.”
The program helps homes and businesses that lack internet, as well as those whose existing internet access is of poor quality. “We need an appeals process to identify thousands more people who have access to the internet but have slow speeds. We will choose winners based on a transparent and free scoring rubric. We will then report them to the National Telecommunications and Information Authority.”
Once the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program verifies that the awardee followed the agreed-upon process, the awardee will receive funding to build their internet network.
“All of these networks are going to be built on a reimbursement basis. This is not about handing a check to an ISP and trusting them to do the job. We will receive a refund each time we receive it,” Feynman said.
rural network costs
“The reason the private sector has not been able to solve this problem on its own lies in the basic mathematics of building telecommunications networks in rural parts of the country. How much does a mile of fiber in Reno or downtown Las Vegas cost? costs about the same as a mile of fiber across a rural part of the state. But you can imagine that either city could get many more customers along that mile of fiber, so the revenue it would earn is very large,” Feynman said. “The income that comes from the countryside may be only two, three or four customers. That is, even if he charges $50 a month, even if he charges $100, he will not get back what he invested. It is.”
He said building partnerships with internet providers “reduces costs so it makes economic sense for someone to build and operate the network.” Our customer density is quite low. ”
He said another major obstacle facing internet installations in Nevada is permitting.
“Nevadaans know that there are many federal lands across the state. We are now working with our partners across the federal government to significantly streamline our approach to permitting. network can be built quickly with minimal administrative work.”
Monitoring/Supervision
The final challenge is to ensure that internet service providers “do what the taxpayers pay them to do,” Feynman explained. “We’re giving both ourselves and the state very strong oversight and We’re going to put a surveillance system in place.” “Our private sector partners will do what they’re contracted to do.”
What will the timeline for this project look like?
“We are very close to approving the second part of Nevada’s original proposal,” Feynman said. “They had until the end of last year to submit a plan to us on how they would do this. And we approved the challenge process part of their plan.”
He said the next step is to select a provider, known as a subrecipient, and put out bids the areas of Nevada narrowed down by the appeals process. “It’s going to take a few months, and then we’re going to document everything and put it out for public comment. People are going to have a lot of questions about what the state is going to do and how they’re going to get you online. You will be able to find out.”
He said Nevada “will then absorb those comments and submit a plan to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.” I will approve it. And then they can go off to the races, sign a deal with an internet service provider, and start building right after that. ”
But he said he’ll go back to that challenge process first. “I really want to emphasize the importance of the challenge process. The window closes on March 28th.”
If the FCC map says someone has internet access, but they actually don’t, “there’s no way to know if that person needs the service or not,” he said.
“We really need broad public participation to make sure this works and to make sure everyone is on board. It could be a government, a nonprofit, or an ISP.”
As part of the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has awarded more than $35 million to tribal groups in Nevada, including $500,000 to the Te Mouk Tribe of the Western Shoshone Nation.
“Citizens should submit these challenges to the state broadband office through their local government or nonprofit organization. Local government would be the best bet,” Feinman said.
