Panelists explore deployment challenges and opportunities at Fiber Connect 2024. (Source: FBA)

The “Deployment Challenges and Opportunities: Streamlining Last Mile Connectivity” panel at Fiber Connect 2024 examined the many issues facing what moderator Brendan O’Boyle, chair of the FBA’s Deployment Specialist committee and PLP’s Communications Market National Sales, described as “an unprecedented era of deployment” being driven by BEAD funding and private sector investment. 

Threading through local and state regulation to deploy in a timely manner came up among the primary challenges builders face, especially when the state has one established policy while individual municipalities layer their own preferences on top of it to complicate build processes in each area. 

“For us, it’s really a matter of focusing on ease of deployment, because it’s expensive, it’s hard. It takes a long time,” said Rod Hanson, CEO, Cityside Fiber. “Jurisdictions have their own agenda sometimes…In California, they passed a law requiring microtrenching, requiring cities to have a microtrenching policy and they didn’t dictate what the [exact] policy was. But they did say that you have to have it available, which has helped us tremendously…Most of the cities are fine with microtrenching, but we’ve had cities say you have to restore the entire travel way for a two-inch cut, which doesn’t make any sense.”

“To piggyback on what’s already been said, you can be operating in multiple states, [and also encounter] the lack of consistency at municipalities within the state,” said Jeff Manning, Vice President, Network Strategy, Shentel/Glo Fiber. “Each one has different rules, regulations, how you permit, the process around. It just makes it a complicated process when you’re getting your new construction engine up and running. Every market has different processes to some extent.”

Making sure contractors are suitably qualified and understand the regulations within the markets they operate is also a concern, especially in keeping projects on time and being able to flow field crews to where they are needed. 

“We’re at very early stages,” said Hanson. “Part of that is finding the right vendor by talking to our contractors that have experience in the market. It’s also important that they have experience with the cities that we’re involved with. It goes much easier with cities they are familiar with, with contractors who they are working with, and then they have confidence in the quality of work that they do.”

“One of the keys to be able to hit [deployment] numbers and get the engine really going is the consistency of work for the contractor, so you don’t have to reengage and you don’t have to stall and stop, you can keep him moving to the next level,” said Manning. “Building that model and being able to keep them moving is a great way to perform consistency, maintain the same quality.” 

Training consistency and retaining skilled workers has been a problem for some service providers, with GoNetspeed’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and General Manager of New York Paul Griswold noting that it becomes a question if the contractors “are training their people to train correctly.”  Griswold added they train their own staff for installations as well, but often end up losing them to the power company. “We lose a lot of people that we’ve trained.” GoNetspeed is paying people more and recruiting more people to allow for the inevitable departures. “Still, we lose people all the time,” Griswold stated. 

Plodding Through Permits and Locates

Before work can start, permits need to be secured for digging and securing equipment, but municipalities may not be equipped for the sudden increase in applications as builders lay out their construction plans. “A challenge is getting an expectation of [work] and having those early meetings with the city staff, [getting] the understanding of what it is we’re going to be doing and why it’s important. If you get support from a city manager and the elected officials, they find a way to get permits out to you, it just takes time,” said Hanson.

Communications with city officials is an important point at the early stages of a project, given the critical nature of permitting. “You let them know what the expectations are, here’s what is coming,” said Manning. “If you look at some of these smaller permitting departments, they don’t even know what the volume [of permit applications] is going to look like. When you get in front of it, and start talking through it, they can start thinking about resource challenges that they have, we can start talking about how we can flow permits and help with those resource challenges when you start to build that partnership.” 

Likewise, the ability to efficiently market buried utilities at the large scale and pace of network construction becomes a challenge for towns that rarely have seen a major surge of construction in their lifetime. Working to build cordial relationships in the beginning can make things flow efficiently for construction and ease issues when something inevitably goes wrong. 

“On locates, we’ve done something very similar, because that’s such an issue,” stated Manning, with smaller towns having trouble keeping up with the sudden workload. “We work with them, looking to get support, other locators to come in. We can get into some shared resources that can help move things along. It’s so important to develop those partnerships early and upfront and keep them going through the whole process because there’s going to be damages, we’re going to hit a water line somewhere, right? Being able to restore them quickly, it helps a lot, when we have that partnership in place so that water line hit doesn’t mean the front page and scare off the rest of the community.”

The First Face-to-Face Customer Experience

The first impression a service provider delivers is very important from the day construction starts, even as the first crews start rolling out to climb up poles and dig trenches to deploy conduit. 

“Your first introduction to a new municipality, to a potential customer, is a messy process of plowing through their property and restoring any damages,” said Manning. “The brand opportunity in doing that well is so critical to being able to later onboard those customers. I think you have to put a lot of focus on quality, on restorations. We take damage prevention and damage restoration very seriously. We’ve set up teams and that’s their only focus. You need to respond to a negative impact in 24 hours. It’s amazing the positive impact that has, because they hadn’t necessarily experienced that before. If you can show how you are a different service provider, I think they appreciate that and you have a higher likelihood of onboarding a customer.”

Once initial construction is complete, field technicians dispatched to connect homes play their role in establishing service provider credibility. The fiber tech turning up service may be the first person from the company to physically meet with the customer. First impressions are important.

“I live in Ft. Worth, Texas,” said O’Boyle. “I just got [fiber], but the young man sent to [my] door, had no idea when they deployed and what the conditions were around it…it’s got to be so important to strategize with your contractors and employers about what that legacy has been, what you’ve gone through, what steps you’ve gone through [to deploy fiber].”

“The product certainly matters, your marketing matters,” said Katie Espeseth, Vice President New Products, EPB. “But that person inside your home, standing in front of your customer has got to know the message and carry the message and act consistently with your brand.”

Market Competition

Service providers today are finding that they aren’t alone in building new fiber networks and some markets which once appeared to be sure winners have become less so for a variety of reasons. 

“If you’re the first or second one in, hopefully the first, you’re in a better position,” said Griswold. “As we look around markets starting to figure out where else to go, if there’s two or three [providers], we aren’t going into that market. Two years ago, when we first started this operation, that wouldn’t even apply that we would have multiple fiber competitors in the market, that many and new ones we’ve never seen before, then you have the incumbent.”

GoNetspeed didn’t know it was going to encounter the level of new competition that it is seeing today and is now in the process of backing out of certain markets and looking for other opportunities it hadn’t considered before. Shentel’s fiber build criteria is similar to GoNetspeed’s. 

“We don’t want to be the second fiber provider in the market or the third fiber provider in the market,” stated Manning. “We’re looking for those markets where we can be the first provider, have a technical advantage over what the incumbents have there. And I’ll tie this back to what we said about quality and branding, the image you’re putting out there and how important that image is in competitive market.” 

Being viable in competitive markets requires an investment of time, initially with city officials and then more broadly with the people who live there. “Because we’re aerial [deployment] so much, we don’t need to meet with those towns and villages [for permits], but we do, so they know we’re coming in,” said Griswold. “If we do need permits, we can get permits faster because they understand what we’re trying to do…We really do enjoy getting to know the communities and supporting their community events and things like that. We have to, because then they sign up.”

EBP, now operating broadband fiber in Chattanooga for over a decade, invested considerable time rallying the community in support of the electric co-op’s efforts to install fiber to every household and business in the area, a model which has worked well for it over its many years of operation as a service provider. 

“First, we had to make sure that we had the support of our local officials,” said Espeseth. “Then we spent a lot of time with the business leaders. We met with a group of business leaders every week for an hour and talked to them, this is what we’re going to do. This is what we’re going to spend, this is what we think it will do for our community. Are you for us, are you against us?

“Then we took that message out to any organization that would talk to us. We spun up a speaker’s bureau internally and trained our employees, let them put in their own words, and then we sent them to any civic group that would listen to us and said, ‘This is what we’re going to do. If you want us to do it, but more importantly, if you don’t want us to do it right here. We don’t want to do this if nobody’s going to be behind it.’ I think building those partnerships early on and before we ever put the first fiber in the air or underground was what led to our success.”

This article and similar stories can be found in the Q3 edition of the Fiber Forward Magazine.

Special Guest:

Jill Springer Senior Policy Advisor for Permitting Chief Environmental Review and Permitting Officer Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth, NTIA

Fiber Day on the Hill

On April 11, 2024, FBA will host our second annual “Fiber Day on the Hill” in Washington, DC. Last year, this event brought over 200 bipartisan attendees from Congress and the Administration and was an incredible, interactive educational opportunity to learn about fiber broadband. This year’s Fiber Day on the Hill will bring exciting new demos, while maintaining a focus on the fundamentals of fiber and the opportunity to learn to splice fiber as part of the event. Fiber Day on the Hill provides an opportunity for participants to see demo stations presented by FBA members that explain what fiber is and how it improves U.S. households, communities, and the economy. We hope you will participate in this event. Please reach out to FBA to learn more about this opportunity.

Quarterly Overview

Broadband Equity, Access, and Development (BEAD) Grants 

On December 15, 2023, Louisiana became the first state to receive approval for its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program proposal and this quarter brought additional approvals of proposals. With much anticipation, FBA is working to help our members navigate grant criteria and continues to advocate for ongoing BEAD priorities.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) BEAD timeline predicts that most funding distribution will start by late 2024 into early 2025. As a reminder, NTIA has a great BEAD proposal tracker on the Internet for All website: www.internetforall.gov.

Letter of Credit Requirement

An important issue that FBA advocated for on behalf of our membership was the irrevocable standby Letter of Credit (LOC) requirement for subgrantees receiving support under BEAD.

FBA supports assuring that all parties have the financial capabilities to complete projects, yet the initial proposal reached beyond what we believed necessary to achieve that goal. NTIA responded to stakeholder input by issuing a programmatic waiver on November 1, 2023, that will ensure more midsize and small providers, which have long supported underserved communities, have a fair opportunity to participate in the historic BEAD program and connect Americans to high-speed fiber broadband. The waiver modifies the LOC requirement for subgrantees of all Eligible Entities in the following ways: Allow Credit Unions to Issue LOCs; Allow Use of Performance Bonds; Allow Eligible Entities to Reduce the Obligation Upon Completion of Milestones; and Allow for an Alternative Initial LOC or Performance Bond Percentage.

Uniform Guidance

NTIA released a policy notice on December 26, 2023, providing “tailoring” on the application of the Uniform Guidance in the BEAD program. The Uniform Guidance is the federal government’s framework for grants management, providing rules and requirements for federal grant programs. NTIA guidance addresses program income; fixed amount subgrants, enables service providers to make network upgrades without prior approval; and establishes a ten-year Federal Interest period for broadband infrastructure projects after the network is constructed.

Availability of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to all Americans

FBA submitted comments on December 1, 2023, to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Section 706 Notice of Inquiry (“NOI”) “concerning the ‘availability of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans.’” The FCC is required to conduct this inquiry on an annual basis to evaluate the state of broadband across the country and consider many characteristics of broadband deployment, including affordability, adoption, availability, and equitable access when determining whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. FBA encourages the FCC to create a long-term gigabit symmetric, low latency benchmark in tandem with other federal agencies.

Open Internet Regulation

The FCC has proposed classifying broadband internet access services as a telecommunications service and imposing common carrier and “open internet” regulations on broadband service providers. FBA believes this is both unwarranted and will undermine broadband investment, particularly in fiber infrastructure and service innovation. In December, FBA filed comments in opposition to this proposal. Congress, not the FCC, should address this issue.

Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)

In early January, Chairwoman Rosenworcel and the FCC communicated wind-down guidance for the ACP to industry and households subscribed to the program. With over 20 million households subscribed to this program, FBA encourages Congress to appropriate funding to continue this program, which has been integral in keeping Americans connected to the internet and allows them to participate in all aspects of the economy and society. We appreciate the bipartisan, bicameral leadership on this issue and support the legislation introduced in early January that would allocate $7 billion in additional funding for the ACP. The legislation was introduced by Senators Peter Welch (D-VT) and J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Representatives Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and we appreciate their leadership. This is an issue that impacts every congressional district and while Congress looks for long-term reforms, the ACP should continue to be funded. 

Fiber Broadband Association Public Policy Leadership

FBA’s Public Policy Committee is led by co-chairs Chris Champion, Vice President, Government Affairs, C Spire; and Jordan Gross, Manager of Federal Government Affairs, Corning. Ariane Schaffer, Government & Public Policy, Google Fiber, is the FBA Board Liaison. If your company is interested in joining the public policy committee, please email mmitrovich@fiberbroadband.org to join.

The Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) has developed a new technician training program being labeled as the Optical Telecom Installation Certification (OpTIC) program. It’s hoping to get vocational schools, community colleges, and veteran training programs to adopt the program. The first launch of the program will be at the Wilson Community College in Wilson, NC.

The training course consists of 144 hours of class and lab courses that will be followed by a 2,000-hour apprenticeship. The key to making this work will be fiber companies of all types to step up to accept and work with the apprentices. That could be fiber construction companies, ISPs, and anybody else that operates fiber networks. Apprentice programs are great for participants because they get paid during the apprenticeship work, with the pay increasing as they progress through the training program.

The OpTIC program has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor, which means that the program is eligible for state and federal grants. That’s really important right now because communities could use ARPA funding to help establish local training programs. I think every community understands that technical training programs are one of the best paybacks that any community can invest in since this creates higher-paying jobs. The eleven trade groups said in February that the average technician salary is $77,500.

Details of the new training program are on this website. Anybody who completes the program will be certified as an FBA accredited OpTIC technician.

For now, this program is being launched at just the one community college. Hopefully, other institutions around the country will jump on the bandwagon. That’s likely going to take ISPs to step up and partner with local schools to get this started. FBA announced the initiative at its recent Fiber Connect annual meeting in Nashville. Hopefully, a lot of attendees at that meeting carried the idea home for further discussion.

There is no doubt that this is needed. We are already in a superheated industry in terms of the amount of fiber construction that is underway this year. ISPs of all sizes are expanding fiber coverage this year. There is even more fiber construction on the way as the current round of grants kick in, including RDOF, NTIA grants, ReConnect grants, EDA grants, and ARPA grants. The top will really be blown off the industry if Congress adds an infrastructure program to build massive amounts of fiber.

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“The whole goal is to better inform broadband policy and investment decision making,” Tim Moyer, Director of Data & Mapping at NTIA, said during a recent Fiber for Breakfast.

The combination of public and nonpublic data makes the NBAM unable to be shared publicly. However, Moyer explained that the IBN map was designed to bring multiple third-party datasets together to help the public better understand the digital divide and the connection between poverty and broadband access or use.

Each layer gives the option to view county level, census tract and census block data including Microsoft usage, M-Lab and Ookla speed tests, American Community Survey data and information from the Federal Communications Commission Form 477 (which is self-reported data). There are then additional layers with the option to view Minority Serving Institutions, Tribal Lands and more.

The map presents a detailed view of usage and access to the internet across the U.S. Areas with an indicator of need are red while “served” are green and those without data are grey.

When looking at the map using its opening presets, the country is far more red than green, indicating a high percentage of unserved. The FCC has estimated 17 million unserved Americans while the Biden Administration number is closer to 20 million unserved and Microsoft’s data indicates that the number is in the range of 42 million. Moyer said the true answer is probably somewhere in the middle, according to this compilation of research.

“We’re not saying that all of these areas are necessarily unserved. We’re saying there is an indicator of need,” he explained. “It could be that there’s a lack of infrastructure, it could be that there is a digital inclusion challenge. But the bottom line, I think, is this pandemic has shone a light that parts of the country don’t have the same access that other parts do.”

He said this map is a means to highlight that divide and start a conversation.

“There is no silver bullet data set,” Moyer said. “These are indicators of need. They inform the conversation, they are not determinant, but it certainly tells us a little more than the 477 by itself.”

Moyer stressed, however, that the map is to be used as a tool.

“One of the questions we’ve gotten was when a service provider sees a red area that they thought was served,” he recalled. “Our first recommendation is to turn off all of the indicators of need and simply look at the Form 477 data–the self-reported data–to confirm.”

He explained that a red area on the map in a self-reported covered area may not be indicating it’s an infrastructure problem, it could be a digital inclusion issue.

“Some communities don’t use the internet the way that others do,” he said. “So, it’s not painting a finger to say there’s no infrastructure, it’s pointing a finger to say, ‘We’ve got to look into this area more because there are question marks.”

“This public map was designed to identify and help shine a light on the digital divide in regard to both access and use,” Moyer continued, noting how there are strong correlations between the broadband indicators of need map and the poverty dataset later. “So, it isn’t just about where the infrastructure is, it’s about where people are not accessing the internet and what we as federal agencies can do to target that–whether that’s an infrastructure play or a digital inclusion play about the funding that needs to into helping those areas.”

Listen to the full presentation on the Fiber for Breakfast podcast  here.

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“The whole goal is to better inform broadband policy and investment decision making,” Tim Moyer, Director of Data & Mapping at NTIA, said during a recent Fiber for Breakfast.

The combination of public and nonpublic data makes the NBAM unable to be shared publicly. However, Moyer explained that the IBN map was designed to bring multiple third-party datasets together to help the public better understand the digital divide and the connection between poverty and broadband access or use.

Each layer gives the option to view county level, census tract and census block data including Microsoft usage, M-Lab and Ookla speed tests, American Community Survey data and information from the Federal Communications Commission Form 477 (which is self-reported data). There are then additional layers with the option to view Minority Serving Institutions, Tribal Lands and more.

The map presents a detailed view of usage and access to the internet across the U.S. Areas with an indicator of need are red while “served” are green and those without data are grey.

When looking at the map using its opening presets, the country is far more red than green, indicating a high percentage of unserved. The FCC has estimated 17 million unserved Americans while the Biden Administration number is closer to 20 million unserved and Microsoft’s data indicates that the number is in the range of 42 million. Moyer said the true answer is probably somewhere in the middle, according to this compilation of research.

“We’re not saying that all of these areas are necessarily unserved. We’re saying there is an indicator of need,” he explained. “It could be that there’s a lack of infrastructure, it could be that there is a digital inclusion challenge. But the bottom line, I think, is this pandemic has shone a light that parts of the country don’t have the same access that other parts do.”

He said this map is a means to highlight that divide and start a conversation.

“There is no silver bullet data set,” Moyer said. “These are indicators of need. They inform the conversation, they are not determinant, but it certainly tells us a little more than the 477 by itself.”

Moyer stressed, however, that the map is to be used as a tool.

“One of the questions we’ve gotten was when a service provider sees a red area that they thought was served,” he recalled. “Our first recommendation is to turn off all of the indicators of need and simply look at the Form 477 data–the self-reported data–to confirm.”

He explained that a red area on the map in a self-reported covered area may not be indicating it’s an infrastructure problem, it could be a digital inclusion issue.

“Some communities don’t use the internet the way that others do,” he said. “So, it’s not painting a finger to say there’s no infrastructure, it’s pointing a finger to say, ‘We’ve got to look into this area more because there are question marks.”

“This public map was designed to identify and help shine a light on the digital divide in regard to both access and use,” Moyer continued, noting how there are strong correlations between the broadband indicators of need map and the poverty dataset later. “So, it isn’t just about where the infrastructure is, it’s about where people are not accessing the internet and what we as federal agencies can do to target that–whether that’s an infrastructure play or a digital inclusion play about the funding that needs to into helping those areas.”

Listen to the full presentation on the Fiber for Breakfast podcast  here.

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Ubiquitous Fiber Deployment

A successful and competitive national strategy to secure 5G relies on ubiquitous fiber deployment. No community can be left behind. 5G relies on ubiquitous fiber deployment. Take for example 5G’s three use cases:

• Immersive broadband,
• Mission critical applications such as autonomous vehicles, and
• Massive IoT

All will require gigabit bandwidth and ultra-low latency from very small cell sites that serve 200 to 1,000 feet as 5G requires more spectrum, more bits/Hz and roughly 10 times increase in cell site density. As a result, 5G cell sites will need a massive fiber infrastructure for the front-haul and backhaul of 5G traffic with ultra-low latency.

Fiber is also the only transmission medium that can carry multi-gigabit traffic today and evolve over time to meet the exponential growth in mobile data traffic.

Communities that lack fiber will perpetuate the digital divide. This holds true for both urban and suburban communities across America. Areas without fiber will not see 5G, and the digital divide will be exacerbated rather than alleviated over time.

Actionable Items for NTIA, the FCC, Congress and the Biden Administration

Government broadband subsidies should prioritize fiber and gigabit symmetrical service delivery to provide the needed critical infrastructure for 5G with ubiquitous fiber deployment. This is because we know ubiquitous fiber deployment maximizes 5G performance, provides a secure 5G critical infrastructure, reduces spectrum demand and elevates the rural digital divide.

The government has already put forth incentives for investment and future proofing rural broadband through legislation supporting Gigabit broadband in the 116th Congress, including:

• H.R. 7302/S. 4131 (Clyburn-Klobuchar) allocated $80 billion for rural broadband with preference for symmetrical gigabit networks.
• S. 4113 (Bennet) allocated $30 billion for rural broadband with preference for symmetrical gigabit networks.
• H.R. 7922/S. 4201 (Clyburn-Upton, Portman-Brown) instructed the FCC to accelerate funding for symmetrical gigabit providers.
• S. 2866 (Capito, Hassan) allocated $2.5 billion of private activity bonds for deployment of gigabit capable internet access to residential or commercial business.
• S. 2867 (Hassan, Capito) provided a 10% tax credit for the deployment of gigabit capable internet access to residential or commercial locations.

5G and Fiber are Critical to our Nation’s Global Competitiveness

Once built, fiber infrastructure will support U.S. global competitiveness. Virtually all developed countries are charging ahead to deploy this critical infrastructure, and foreign competitors are treating fiber as a strategic asset by upgrading technology and flooding the market. Currently, China is leading the charge.

The U.S. is making great strides in deploying fiber, even though we have a greater number of sparsely populated areas than other countries. However, there is much more that industry can accomplish, and the government can facilitate to speed deployments.  

Actionable Items for NTIA, the FCC, DoD, Congress and the Biden Administration

There needs to be increased invest in research and development for next generation technology. President Joe Biden has proposed “Innovate in America” which calls for $300 billion in research and development investment over four years in future technologies and industries to support America’s technological lead. As part of that push, there should also be a focus on enhancing industry workforce training and education.

Supply Security is Fundamental to National Security

We must protect our industrial base and ensure safe and secure US networks. Having a strong domestic industry requires policies that not only invest in technology, but also address targeted national policies of competitor countries that undermine market dynamics through unfair subsidies and trade practices.

As we have seen in other industries, China’s excess capacity is undermining health of the optical fiber industry globally. Currently, they have excess capacity of over 300 million fiber kilometers. That’s nearly enough to supply to current global markets combined. This excess capacity is being dumped in numerous countries and regions—including India and Europe—driving down global pricing and undermining profitability, which in turn can ultimately impact investment in research and development.

Actionable Items for Commerce (NTIA and BIS), DOD, and USTR

First, we must ensure a level playing field across the globe. Work with our allies to address unfair subsidies—the root cause of excess capacity.

Second, there should be clear criterion established for trusted suppliers. The Center for Strategic and International Studies published a list of criteria to assess the trustworthiness of telecommunications suppliers. The criteria complement the work of the Prague Proposal.

Fiber Broadband Association represents more than 250 members, including telecommunications, computing, networking, system integration, engineering, and content-provider companies, as well as traditional service providers, utilities, and municipalities.

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