Michigan’s slow slog toward being able to spend $1.5 billion share of federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds may finally be getting somewhere. After years of delays, and our warning in March of this year that the plan Michigan submitted was likely to be rejected by the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration, Michigan has finally submitted a new plan that appears likely to be approved.
Congress passed the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that created BEAD to fund state-level efforts to speed up broadband deployment following the Covid shutdowns. Four years later, no one in Michigan has been connected to the internet through this program, and the Michigan High-Speed Internet Office (MIHI) has already admitted in testimony before the legislature than no one will be connected using BEAD funds until at least 2026.
For more than two years, Michigan has been trying to use the funding process to impose mandates requiring the most expensive construction materials, imposing wage requirements and climate change assessments on grant recipients, and directing grants to urban areas already well served by existing internet connections. In some cases, the expensive internet technology MIHI wanted to mandate were not the technology users would choose on their own even if the government wasn’t paying for it.
MIHI opened its application process for BEAD funds on January 9, and originally said it would stop accepting applications on April 9. That meant that private companies applying for the funds would have to agree to all of the mandates Michigan wanted to impose, even as the incoming Trump administration had already announced that it was not going to allow these state-imposed mandates.
Evidently MIHI finally got the message. The latest MIHI filing with the NTIA, which is calls its “Final Proposal,” drops nearly all of the burdensome requirements that were intended to advance agendas unrelated to increasing broadband access in Michigan.
Notable, the Final Proposal explicitly takes “a technology-neutral approach throughout the evaluation process . . . All technologies—including fiber, fixed wireless, LEO satellite, HFC, and projects that combined those technologies—were eligible for consideration.” It also drops the wage requirements for workers installing internet infrastructure and instead only requires that grant recipients “certify compliance with existing federal labor and employment law.”
At least two of the concerns we have raised about the MIHI BEAD application still remain, although they appear to be watered down from the earlier proposal. Recipients are still required to offer a “low-cost broadband service option,” but the specific language suggests that this requirement is more flexible that the previous version that appear to be a backdoor price regulation. There is also still a requirement that recipients conduct an environmental impact study, but it does not contain previous language focused on climate change impact.
Ironically, the delays in BEAD-funded deployment may actually make it possible for Michigan to achieve the goal of providing access to an internet connection to everyone in Michigan. But that is not because of anything MIHI or the NTIA has done. Rather, it is because the private sector has continued to charge forward connecting more households to the internet every month.
A recent study looked as how many locations did not have access to an internet connection at the end of 2022, which is the cutoff date NTIA considered when deciding to allocate funds to states. Those are the locations considered eligible for BEAD funding. The study then compared how many locations in the summer of 2024 were still eligible for BEAD funding.
According to the study, eligible locations decreased by 59% nationwide in the 18 months following the original BEAD funding allocations. Less progress was made in Michigan, but the number of eligible locations still dropped by 14%. Presumably by now the number of eligible locations has dropped even more, so that the $1.5 billion in BEAD funding for Michigan may now be spread over something like 25% fewer locations to connect.
Still, the delays in the Michigan BEAD deployment are unfortunate and could have been at least partially avoided. But the latest MIHI BEAD filing finally gives some hope that government-funded internet deployment will get away from unrelated agendas and focus on connecting people to the internet.
