If lawmakers don’t revisit the advanced telecommunications infrastructure (ATI) component of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in the new year and the law is implemented strictly as written, 75 percent grant subsidies for fiber to the premise (FTTP) projects would likely be available only for those in extremely remote areas of the country where the cost per premise passed exceeds $10,000.
That because the law makes those subsidies available only to builds where at least 80 percent of the premises to be served lack existing infrastructure that can provide minimum throughput of 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up with latency sufficient to support real-time, interactive applications. Additionally, its funding formula favors projects in these “unserved” areas that have higher than average costs due to their remoteness, and sparse settlement and topography.
While the federal agency designated to implement that ATI component of the IIJA – the National Telecommunications and Information Administration -- has until May 15, 2022 to set up a program to administer the subsidies, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has indicated funding would be limited to these highly remote areas. "We have to make sure we don't spend this money overbuilding" existing infrastructure, Raimondo was quoted as saying in this Reuters story.
The upshot is the $43.45 billion in grants earmarked for ATI would likely be spent to connect a relatively very small number of remote premises given the high cost of connecting them, leaving behind metro area exurban areas and small towns with numerous gaps in existing ATI.
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