“We have worked really hard within the confines we’ve been given to create one of the most competitive, free-market-based, business-friendly (or business-encouraging) types of programs,” Arkansas broadband director Glen Howie told Telecompetitor.
Howie said Arkansas’ broadband funding program is flexibly designed, allowing providers to use census block groups (CBGs) to align their project footprints, while accounting for their financial modeling. “Our aims are two-fold:” he said, “lowering the administrative burden for providers and letting them know we want competition in Arkansas.”
Howie joined the Arkansas State Broadband Office in August 2022, after working as a senior policy analyst with Veneeth Iyengar in the Louisiana State Broadband Office (ConnectLA). Starting with a staff of just two in Arkansas, the broadband office has grown to seven full-time employees (plus two Americorps employees). But Howie says the staff is small compared to states with similar broadband numbers.
While Arkansas’ Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program allocation was “a little less than expected,” according to Howie, he is proud that Arkansas is one of the 19 states that will receive more than one billion dollars from BEAD. “We’re ninth in the country per capita,” he said. “We have a post-challenge process still subject to NTIA, with 84,000 locations that are BEAD eligible, and that puts us in a great spot.”
Before Howie joined the Arkansas State Broadband Office, providers were able to draw their own project footprints and submit their designs to the state. “But when we went to CPF [the U.S. Treasury Capital Projects Fund], the state defined project footprints on a county-wide basis, and providers would bid on those.”
Howie says there are pros and cons to both methods — i.e., provider-defined project footprints vs. state-defined project footprints. “The state maybe made their footprint designs too large,” he said. “So as an office that’s done this in the past, it made our BEAD program better.”
Howie said the Arkansas State Broadband Office’s goal is that 90% or more of the awards for deployments will be for fiber-based projects.
Still, when asked what percentage of eligible locations will receive fiber, he said, “That’s really hard. You hear different projections and different models. We have to go to the market and see what happens. Where fiber is the most logical, best project, that will win. In other locations where that’s not the best project, potentially a non-fiber project will win.”
While Arkansas’ priority for broadband expansion is mostly on last-mile projects, Howie says “Middle-mile is an allowable expense if providers want to include that and can still be competitive, as long as it includes last-mile connectivity.”
Broadband Priorities Beyond Access
Howie hopes there will be enough funds left over that Arkansas can focus on non-deployment broadband needs. “As a state, we’ve identified four focus areas: health care, small businesses, education, and agriculture,” he said. “We’re looking at statewide efforts around cell tower deployment, and middle mile projects coupled with IXP [internet exchange point] projects.”
He added that “additional levels of connectivity will make us that much more competitive moving forward.”
The goal, Howie said, is to focus on what local communities need. “Last year, we went to all 75 counties and encouraged them to form county broadband communities. 54 of them did.” That level of grassroots involvement “puts us in a great position on the non-deployment side.” He listed some examples of various communities’ priorities, like adding Wi-Fi to parks and downtown squares and improving first-responder communications.
“It’s not always best to have a one-size-fits-all, top-down approach. We value grassroots feedback; these communities know their issues more than we do here in Little Rock.”
Additional information about Arkansas broadband, including state funding resources, awards made, and state-specific coverage, can be found on the Telecompetitor Broadband Nation webpage for the state.
