WASHINGTON, D.C. – ACA Connects is concerned that the billions of dollars being poured into the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program (BEAD) could end up funding areas where adequate broadband already exists or is already being built out through other subsidy programs. But the group's membership of small and midsized independent operators generally does not fear fiber and fixed wireless access (FWA) competition.

"We're not afraid of competition," ACA Connects CEO Grant Spellmeyer said here today at the ACA Connects Summit opening session. "There's plenty of competition out there" that ACA Connects members face every day.

Figure 1: ACA Connects CEO Grant Spellmeyer (left) takes questions from opening session moderator Amy Maclean, editorial director of Cablefax.
(Source: Light Reading/Jeff Baumgartner)

BEAD presents infrastructure opportunities and ACA Connects members are eager to tap into that pool of money, but the program's funding, which will be allocated to individual states, comes with the risk of unnecessary overbuilding.

That, Spellmeyer said, presents an "existential threat" to some ACA Connects members and the potential for some private capital spent on the building of those existing cable networks to be "washed away" by government funding.

Spellmeyer was also asked about reports that some ISPs are facing scrutiny for providing bad or exaggerated mapping data, and if it could mean some broadband providers are trying to be misleading.

"I think it's much more complicated than that," he said, noting that the new broadband mapping initiative is an iterative process. But he did acknowledge that "we've got to be sure we've got the maps right first" to make BEAD work as intended.

State allocation levels, managed by the NTIA, are expected to emerge in July. ACA Connects has already taken a close look at how those allocations might be meted out in a new report/framework developed with business consulting firm Cartesian.

This July is poised to be a "watershed moment," Spellmeyer said, noting that he expects money to start flowing to the states in 2024.

"Some states will come up short and others will come up extra," Spellmeyer predicted. In turn, ACA Connects will put pressure on NTIA to ensure that the allocations are "fair and equitable."

The topic came up later during a session with Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico). Regarding BEAD funding, "the legislation is clear to go to unserved communities first," he said. "Unserved is the primary focus here."

Bridging the ACP gap

Spellmeyer's state of the industry review also dug into a funding gap on the horizon for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

No one is talking about that in great detail, but the program is poised to run out of funding early next year, he said. That will generate a $6 billion to $8 billion hole that Congress could be obligated to fill at a time in which Congress doesn't want to spend money," Spellmeyer explained. "We would like to see [ACP] continue."

Recaptured BEAD funding could be among the places that could help to bridge that shortfall, he predicted.

Luján said he's not positive that an ACP refunding program would have the votes. But he's encouraged by the fact that the original program was built through bipartisan support.

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading