County to seek town support for broadband funds

By Kevin O’Brien

As application deadlines approach for over $1 billion in federal funding, Marathon County officials are up against a tight timeline to connect rural townships with companies interested in expanding high-speed internet into underserved areas.

At a meeting of the county’s broadband task force on Monday, members held a lengthy back-and-forth conversation with Mark Leonard of the Public Service Commission (PSC) about the process for applying for money through the Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Tuesday was the deadline for internet service providers (ISPs) to submit letters of intent to the PSC so that they can be eligible for the BEAD funding that will be available to pay for projects around the state. Funding will be distributed in four rounds, with the first round focusing on projects that involve fiber optic cable.

The ISP’s funding applications will be

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scored on a 100-point scale, with up to 12 points awarded for engagement with local municipalities and endorsement by the county. Leonard said two points will be awarded for showing evidence of a public meeting between local elected officials and ISP representatives, and another two points will be awarded for letters of support from local municipalities. Another point is available for letters of support from community institutions like libraries and school districts.

Task force members had hoped to satisfy the public meeting criteria by putting on presentations at the Western and Eastern Towns Associations meeting later this month. Leonard said having the ISPs attend those meetings would be a good start, but they would need to follow up by meeting with individual town boards to discuss specific projects.

The problem with this part of the process is one of timing. Leonard said the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has not provided a timeline for releasing so-called “project units,” geographic areas that will be used to divide up funding.

“So, for now, we’re still following our estimated timeline,” he said. “Again, it’s estimated, so it could change, but for now we’re still recommending that endorsements be completed by Dec. 18, as of right now.”

Milton Olson, chairman of the town of Weston, wanted to know how his township could figure out which internet companies are interested in doing projects in their area so the town board can issue a letter of support. Leonard reiterated that the NTIA will determine the project units at an undisclosed date.

“In the meantime, you could reach out to providers and see if they have any interest in your area,” he said. “Even without project units, you can still do a letter of support for them if you like.”

Erin Andrews, the county’s broadband coordinator, said it will be “tricky” to get all of the county’s 39 towns to issue support letters by Dec. 18 when they won’t even know where the project units will be located. While waiting for the NTIA to release that information, Leonard said the goal is facilitate as much conversation as possible between the towns and ISPs.

Gerry Klein, the county’s IT director and a trustee in the town of Rib Mountain, questioned how the ISPs will discuss project plans with local municipalities and get letters of endorsement by December when they won’t even know what the project areas are until an undetermined date.

“That schedule just doesn’t work,” he said. “It’ll never happen.”

Andrews suggested the county’s towns “unilaterally skip” the first step of public engagement simply because it’s not feasible to do.

Leonard said that was a good idea, but he also noted that the ISPs will not share the exact details of their proposed projects in public at this point, and will need to meet in closed session with town boards to prevent collusion among the competing companies.

Robinson and others on the task force questioned how a closed session discussion could be considered a “public meeting to engage the community in project planning,” as stated in the PSC’s engagement scoring criteria. As an alternative, he suggested that a meeting format could be set up so each ISP has time to present their project proposals separately to local officials while their competitors are not in the room.

“We’re just trying to figure out how we as a county can help facilitate and strengthen the applications,” he said.

Leonard clarified that Marathon County is not competing against other counties in the state for the $1 billion in BEAD money; rather, the ISPs are competing for county endorsements of their project proposals when applying for funding. BEAD is set up to provide adequate internet service for over 200,000 addresses across Wisconsin that are unserved or underserved, including 8,443 eligible locations in Marathon County, with four rounds of funding that focus on different type of delivery services, from fiber optic cable to satellite.

“The $1 billion will cover everybody, it just might not all be the same technology,” he said. “If would get everyone in Round 1 covered by fiber, that’d be great.”

Under the PSC’s timeline, Round 1 funding will be awarded to ISPs next year, with the permitting processes completed in 2025 for work on fiber projects to begin in 2026.