Hawai’i will go from waiting for a connection to racing to the virtual highway after the federal government pushed “Pay” for a plan to close the digital divide and ensure everyone in the state has affordable, reliable and at high speed. access.
Approval of the state’s initial proposal for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration means Hawaii can now move forward with infrastructure projects to connect locations unserved and unserved with Internet.
To do this, the program allocates $149.5 million in federal funding, which the state can now access to deploy or upgrade high-speed Internet networks across the islands.
All states submitted their initial proposals by December 2023.
The funds come from the Internet for All initiative, which provides a total of $65 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to expand high-speed Internet access in communities across the United States.
The BEAD program is a $42.45 billion state grant program that is also part of the federal infrastructure law.
The goal is to connect 100% of Hawaii’s households and small businesses to high-speed broadband.
According to data released in June by the National Broadband Availability Map, there are 11,924 unserved and underserved homes and small businesses.
On the Big Island, that includes 7,970 unserved homes and businesses and 295 unserved. There are 691 unserved and 8 unserved residences and small businesses in Kaua’i.
Hawaiâ € ˜i County with a total of 8,265 unserved and unserved locations tops the state in lack of broadband connectivity. A map included in the October 2020 edition of the Hawaiâ € ˜i Broadband Strategic Plan shows that most of those residences and businesses are in the Puna district.
Maui comes in second with a total of 1,539, and Kaua’i is third with a total of 699 unserved and underserved homes and small businesses.
“The Internet is now the essential tool for communication in our modern world,” said Alan Davidson, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, during a news conference Tuesday morning announcing the plan’s approval. initial of the state. and next steps. “It’s fundamental to access to education, access to jobs, economic opportunity, access to health care, and this country has been talking about the digital divide for over 25 years.”
Gov. Sylvia Luke, who leads the state’s Connect KÄ kou broadband initiative, said the COVID-19 pandemic has made people realize that Internet service and connectivity have gone from a nice-to-have to a necessity.
“It’s something we have to have,” the lieutenant governor said during the press conference. “Just in the last few days, we’ve had fires on many of the different islands, and the first thing that comes to people’s minds is how do we get communications out? Communication is not something that can be done offline. Connection to the Internet, connection to your phones, connection to what’s happening around our neighborhoods and around our area.”
Connect KÄ kou is a collaboration between the Office of HawaiÊ»i Broadband and Digital Equity, the University of HawaiÊ»i, the Hawaii Department of Home Lands, and several other state and county agencies.
Luke said the project is unlike anything the state has done before, and while the federal government has invested about half a billion dollars over the years in various Internet connectivity initiatives, this is the first time Hawaii has been able to get this type of money for a broadband expansion and infrastructure capital initiative.
She called the approval of $149.5 million in funding unprecedented.
As an island state, Hawaii is unique. It must be ensured that every island is connected to each other first even before it is thought to be 100% connected to the mainland and the rest of the world.
The undersea cable that connects the islands and much of the infrastructure is already aging, so funding through the Internet for All program will be important to ensure redundancy and reliability by expanding connectivity.
The project will initially focus on locations that have traditionally been historically difficult or too expensive to connect, many of which are in very rural areas. This includes Department of Homeland Lands locations in Hawaii.
The project will issue requests for proposals to providers statewide simultaneously, including the Big Island and Kaua’i, and will track contractors by county.
Individual timing will depend on how much work providers need to do to build services, but construction will also be done on a nationwide basis, with no one project expected to start before another.
Once contractors are identified, the goal is to move as quickly as possible. If all goes as planned, the state hopes to begin construction by the latter half of 2025 or early 2026.
After deployment goals are met, any remaining funds will be available for training, workforce development efforts, and other eligible uses.
A year from now, Hawaii will submit a final proposal detailing, among other things, the outcome of the project and how it will ensure continued universal broadband Internet coverage.
Davidson said Tuesday’s announcement was a milestone.
He’s confident that looking back at this moment 10 or 20 years from now, people will say that this is when those who had the power to do this stepped up and secured all of Hawai‘i — and everyone in the nation — had the connections they needed.
“Generations before us did very great things,” he said. “They made sure that everyone had electricity, that everyone in the country had water, that we had the essential infrastructure. This is the big infrastructure moment of our generation. This is our chance to make sure we connect everyone in the state and everyone in the country with the tools they need to succeed in today’s digital economy.”
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