Broadband experts are condemning an amendment to Ohio’s latest budget bill that restricts fixed wireless access (FWA) grants with claims that it could curb the state’s efforts to bridge the digital divide.
Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill this week without vetoing the amendment that means whether licensed or unlicensed, FWA grants from the state will now only be considered in “extremely high-cost” areas of Ohio.
Mike Wendy of the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association (WISPA) said Ohio Senator Rob McColley proposed the amendment to the budget bill, “ostensibly grounded in his belief that only fiber can/should do the job with grants funding.”
Wendy told Fierce that because the amendment was part of the state’s broader budget initiative, the new FWA restrictions were snuck into the process with “little to no debate.”
High-cost threshold locations (EHCTLs), or an "extremely high cost per location threshold area," defines an area in which the cost to build high speed internet infrastructure exceeds the high cost per location threshold established by Ohio’s broadband expansion program.
According to Wendy, these locations only represent “a very small subset of the work needed to get all online.”
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program uses the same “extremely high cost per location threshold” term. And Wendy said that with the way the McColley amendment is written, grants being limited to only EHCTLs could apply not only to state grants, but to BEAD funding too.
“If that is the case, we submit that the state could be unlawfully preempting federal statute by substituting its own technology restrictions for those established for the BEAD program,” wrote WISPA and NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association in a joint letter to Gov. DeWine earlier this week.
The letter added that if applied to BEAD, the amendment also could “handcuff” Ohio by limiting its ability to seek waivers of the BEAD rules that would enable more unserved and underserved areas of the state to be funded with BEAD grants, thus “limiting the state’s goals of limiting the digital divide.”
“While it is still not clear if the language will affect BEAD, we know that it will make the state grant program extremely difficult for wireless providers to access,” Wendy said. Where fiber isn’t doable or bid for in an area during the BEAD grant process, other technologies are often used – such as fixed wireless – by the state to “wire their populace.”
If the McColley amendment extends to BEAD grants, it could also prevent 5G, CBRS and other licensed wireless offerings from getting people online unless they live in EHCLTs.
“Fewer solutions never result in more flexibility. Consequently, [the budget bill’s] restrictions will make it more difficult, slower and more expensive to connect all Ohioans to reliable, high-speed internet, while also putting Ohio potentially out of step with Federal BEAD guidelines,” Wendy said.
The governor’s office and the BroadbandOhio office (part of the state’s Development Services Agency) did not immediately respond to Fierce’s request for comment.