Two weeks ago on Monday, December 4, TACIR met once again to discuss broadband in Tennessee, but this time commission members and the public saw the results of over a year and a half of work by TACIR staff in the form of a draft report that is slated to receive final approval in late January.

 

The 147-page report covers a lot of ground while looking into three main areas: broadband currently offered, broadband adoption, and current programs to assist with both. The report provides extremely detailed information and data, including the broadband survey that was completed by the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development earlier this year. After evaluating the data and broadband landscape in Tennessee, the draft report makes several recommendations and findings:

• Tennessee should focus its efforts on supporting and coordinating these existing initiatives and on addressing any remaining coverage and adoption gaps.
• The minimum capacity necessary to provide broadband capability is 10 megabits per second download and one megabit per second upload. The 25 megabits per second download and 3 megabits per second upload standard for broadband that the FCC adopted in January 2015 is a better measure of what communities will need to support residential and business users, though large industries, hospitals, schools and universities, and libraries may require even faster connections.
• Increasing funding so that all libraries meet TSLA’s guidelines would improve access to digital literacy resources in communities throughout the state, and expanding the hotspot lending program would encourage more individuals to use broadband by increasing their access to service they could not afford on their own.
• The Department of Education and the Tennessee State Library and Archives should continue to work with schools and libraries to help them maximize the state’s use of E-Rate funding to ensure that all schools and libraries have broadband. They should explore options to better educate them about the funds and the application process and to better assist them administratively in completing the applications.
• The state, through the coordinated efforts of its existing agencies, including the Department of Economic and Community Development, the Department of Education, and the regional development districts, and its existin glocal assistance resources, including the Municipal Technical Advisory Service and the County Technical Assistance Service, should encourage and assist local governments in establishing targeted broadband adoption programs that combine training and financial assistance.
• Tennessee could use the broadband deployment fund to provide competitive grants to unserved or underserved areas not already being targeted by Connect America Fund grants.
• Tennessee could offer credits against franchise and excise taxes for broadband infrastructure investments, and target improvements to unserved and underserved areas by giving larger credits for investments in those unserved and underserved areas. Like is done with other tax credit programs such as the low-income housing tax credit, the state could cap the amount of credits available statewide per year and use competitive application processes to award credits.
• To assist communities that want to streamline local regulations, Tennessee could, like Indiana and Wisconsin, designate communities that adopt a checklist of permitting and zoning procedures as "broadband ready communities" to signal providers that they have removed regulatory barriers to broadband investment.
• Allow the state’s electric cooperatives to partner with existing providers, including municipal providers, to provide broadband service in the cooperatives’ electric service areas. Municipal utilities in these partnerships would be forbidden from issuing bonds to fund the construction of broadband networks outside their electric service areas, but they could use their existing central office facilities—which already have excess capacity—to operate the electric cooperatives’ networks as wholesalers. Electric cooperatives would build and maintain the network infrastructure inside their electric service areas and function as retail internet service providers.
• Tennessee could coordinate its broadband efforts using a standing working group made up of state and local officials, representatives of broadband providers, and representatives of the many not-profit organizations working to increase internet connectivity.

The report touched on many of the common issues that come up regarding broadband, including pole attachments. The report grudgingly acknowledges TVA’s role as the regulatory authority over pole attachments, and finds that "Tennessee likely lacks authority to override TVA’s formula according to a 2014 opinion by the state’s attorney general."

 

As the legislature comes into session next month, it goes without saying the TACIR report may be a key consideration for some legislators. This draft report will likely be discussed and acted upon at the next TACIR meeting January 26-27. The governor’s office is still discussing whether to introduce legislation on broadband and what will be in the legislation if it does, and we have heard rumors there may be several bills filed on this topic.

 

The draft report and executive summary can be found here. A link to the video of the meeting is on the site, and the documents related to broadband are under Tab 3. There you will find the executive summary, the draft report, and fourteen appendices, four of which deal with TVA and pole attachments. If you have any questions, need more information, or have comments on anything in the report, please let us know.