The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), which represents small and fixed wireless internet providers, wants to banish a provision in the administration’s major broadband deployment funding program. The Notice of Funding Opportunity for the $42.5 billion BEAD program designates areas served with only fixed wireless as lacking adequate connectivity, WISPA policy heads said on Tuesday, according to Broadband Breakfast.
It excludes fixed wireless technology that operates on entirely unlicensed spectrum – spectrum bands not licensed to designated carriers by the FCC, from the definition of reliable broadband fixed wireless. That means some areas served by some WISPA members are shut out of the program. “We’re continuing our aggressive advocacy to overturn the deeply flawed decision,” said WISPA VP Policy Louis Peraertz, in an address to the group at its yearly conference WISPAPALOOZA in Las Vegas. WISPA’s arguments against the provision, Peraertz said, have “received support from several congressional offices.”
The group is also pushing state broadband offices to make BEAD funds available to fixed wireless providers. WISPA State Advocacy Manager Steven Schwerbel said the association had a hand in setting Ohio’s planned “extremely high-cost threshold.” That’s the point at which the state will look to technologies other than fiber-optic cable to keep costs down.
“Thanks to our input, that threshold is being set in a way that will allow our members to compete for state grant dollars as widely as possible,” he said, according to Broadband Breakfast. Pennsylvania’s broadband office is in talks with WISPA about its high-cost threshold, according to Schwerbel.
States are in the process of submitting BEAD initial proposals to the NTIA. They’re due by December 27. They come in two volumes. The second includes the high-cost threshold and other grant awarding procedures.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
Reader Interactions