Louisiana has become a catalyst in the rural broadband arena.
The state was the first to receive funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARPA) and have a broadband office.
But now the state has made its most significant achievement yet—it is the first to get Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) funding. The state was awarded $1.36 billion, which it will use to connect 140,000 locations.
A large portion—or 95.4% of its BEAD unserved and underserved locations—will be served with fiber broadband projects.
With $342 million through the FCC's RDOF program, it will also deliver internet service to more than 175,000 homes and small businesses in rural Louisiana.
It also helps local economies and job markets, with an estimated 5,000 jobs created to construct and maintain new broadband networks throughout the state.
During the recent Fiber for Breakfast webinar, Veneeth Iyengar, executive director of Louisiana's broadband initiative, ConnectLA, said the state’s BEAD efforts are moving forward.
“We were the first to announce provisional awards in November and have submitted our final BEAD proposal that includes all of the feedback from everybody,” he said. “Then, we start to move to the execution phase, to the private sector and the companies, and they do what they do best, which is to build efficiently.”
Focus on fiber
Louisiana’s broadband efforts use fiber-based solutions to deliver broadband to residents and businesses.
After the Louisiana Broadband office was created in 2020, Iyengar took up his post in 2021. At that time, it used $176 million of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to reach 65,000 households. To date, 60 percent of the work has been completed.
Also, 95 percent of the work is under construction and will be completed by the end of this year.
Iyengar emphasized that “98-99 of the work on these projects is fiber, and over 70 percent will be constructed underground.”
With the $1.5 billion BEAD funding allocation, Connect LA set a goal to maximize the funding.
“If we could build quality broadband infrastructure once and for all, and people don’t have to worry about access to high-speed quality broadband connectivity, we can all move on with life,” Iyengar said.
10-point plan
Having a large financial cushion, Connect LA spent a lot of 2022 and 2023, and it could work with the state to maximize the dollars to ensure people get the best technology.
This drove Connect LA to create a 10-point plan.
As part of this plan, the group would spend $750 million to build 140,000 Broadband Serviceable Locations (BSLs) approved by the NTIA. Out of this group, 95 percent will get fiber.
However, the availability of fiber connectivity is only one issue. All the fiber cables will be placed underground, which enables protection from hurricanes and other weather events.
“Over 90 of those locations will get not only fiber but that fiber will be buried underground,” Iyengar said. “This is critical because, in five months, hurricane season begins.”
He added that building fiber underground means ensuring its infrastructure lasts several decades. “We said let’s not do a patchwork effort that will collapse in a couple of years,” Iyengar said. “Instead, let’s build infrastructure that’s hyper resilient and builds highways and fiber deep into the heart of Louisiana.”
Attracting data center opportunities
Louisiana’s move to build resilient fiber-based infrastructure is not just about consumer broadband.
The fiber deployment is helping to attract hyperscalers to locate data centers in the state.
Meta, for example, announced it would build a 4.3 million square foot $10 billion artificial intelligence (AI) data center in northeast Louisiana.
The company projects the data center will support 500 or more direct new jobs in Richland Parish. Louisiana Economic Development (LED) estimates the project will create more than 1,000 indirect jobs, for more than 1,500 potential new jobs in the Northeast Region.
Meta will build a second data center near interstate route I-10 in South Louisana.
“One of the reasons why that multi-billion-dollar investment is being made in that part of the state is related to the fact that there’s significant fiber infrastructure along I-10,” Iyengar said. “The thought process is we push fiber throughout the state of Louisiana, penetrate fiber throughout the state and that will result in economic development wins over the lifetime of those areas.”
Consortiums step up
During the bidding process, which was designed to enable competition, Louisiana had 36 participants in the pre-qualification process; 30 were approved, and 20 won the funding.
In addition to most bids focused on fiber, over 70 percent of the funds were awarded to Louisiana-based companies, which Iyengar said Connect LA did not foresee.
“This was not by design,” he said. “We did not tip the award scales to Louisiana-based companies when it came to awarding these dollars, but these local companies competed with a stronger than puncher’s chance to winning these dollars.”
Winners included Cajun Broadband, which won $20 million.
Interestingly, the Louisiana Local Fiber Consortium (LLFC) was the largest winner after completing the funding bidding process.
The consortium, made up of Swyft Fiber, REV in partnership with T-Mobile, will receive nearly $450 million in funding from the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program to bring high-speed internet to more areas in Louisiana.
Swyft Fiber and REV, based in Louisiana, specialize in connecting rural areas with fiber internet. Both companies will hire new employees, focusing on local workers to support the expansion.
Iyengar said that T-Mobile’s presence in the consortium was crucial.
“I will tell you why T-Mobile is crucial: we incentivized companies to build underground infrastructure to ensure resilience,” he said. “Also, we’ve had people lose their lives because people who did not have adequate cell phone coverage did not get a key 911 message during the summertime tornado season.”
ConnectLA identified 100-plus areas throughout the state it calls critical resilience nodes. These are areas where there are gaps in cell phone coverage where people live.
“We awarded points to mobile providers that partnered with fiber providers or any provider that would build cell phone towers that would be responsive to public safety needs and turned on during an emergency,” Iyengar said. “Because of T-Mobile’s partnership with REV and Swyft, over 30 new cell towers will be built throughout Louisiana.”
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Sean Buckley
Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategies of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report across their websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products.