Docomo Pacific has raised concerns of cost-efficiency over the evaluation of grant awards under the federally funded Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program in the Northern Mariana Islands.
Glen Hunter, Broadband Policy and Development Office director, said the decision-making process is consistent with National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s review and that — considering the challenge of typhoons which have caused millions of dollars in damage to NMI’s utilities to include telecoms — running fiber underground adds to resilience which is a factor in the selections.
The dispute in the NMI reflects the tension between cost efficiency and infrastructure resilience — a debate that is playing out across many U.S. states following the June policy shift. The Trump administration directed states and territories to prioritize the lowest-cost technology-neutral solutions.
The NMI was awarded about $80 million through BEAD to expand high-speed internet access to residents and businesses. It’s part of a national $42.45 billion federally funded program authorized by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. The NTIA administers the program, which focuses on broadband planning, deployment, mapping, equity, and adoption activities, prioritizing unserved and underserved locations. See story: Community input sought as NMI pushes ahead with high-speed internet access plan.
Hunter also said Docomo’s concerns are being reviewed as part of the public comment period, which ends Aug. 23. His office oversees the program in the NMI, which is charged with administering in the NMI the nation-wide federally-funded effort to ensure everyone home, business, and community space has internet access. The final BEAD proposal will be submitted to NTIA following the close of public comment.
In a public comment submitted Aug. 20, Docomo Pacific raised sharp concerns that the NMI BPD Draft Final Proposal disregarded the intent of recent BEAD reforms by the Trump administration, which placed new emphasis on cost efficiency and technology neutrality. Read Docomo's statement here.
Docomo Pacific’s bid for CNMI broadband expansion came in at approximately $1.78 million, compared to the provisional award selection of $31.3 million. The company said the $29.6 million price gap is “a perverse waste of American taxpayer dollars” and is inconsistent with the June 6 BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice issued by the NTIA.
“By this measure, the award should go to the bidder whose proposal can deliver the desired speed and latency with the least amount of BEAD funding,” the company wrote, urging an independent technical review committee be brought in to reexamine the CNMI selections. Docomo also said its hybrid fiber coax aerial network approach is widely used elsewhere in the U.S. and in Guam, and questioned why NMI would exclude this solution.
The telecom further raised transparency issues with BPD’s draft proposal documents, saying that naming conventions and unclear identifiers made it difficult for the public to determine which ISPs were selected.
The NMI office responded with a clarifying statement posted on social media “to share some context and explain the process that guided our decisions.”
The NMI BEAD Initial Proposal Volume 2 included an explanation of how the provisional selections were made. The office received three priority broadband project applications for each of the 21 BEAD Project Funded Areas for buried, hardened, resilient, end to end fiber network deployment:
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IT&E submitted fiber applications valued at $30 million.
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GTA submitted fiber applications valued at $60 million.
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Docomo Pacific submitted fiber applications valued at $90 million.
NMI officials said it selected the lowest-cost fiber proposals and that the NTIA has already reviewed and approved its methodology.
“The $1.7 million of applications that Docomo Pacific is referencing in their public comment letter … is for aerial HFC (cable) network deployment on utility poles,” officials said. “This did not meet the standard for Priority Broadband Project for any of our Project Areas.”
Officials emphasized the priority was building a broadband network that can withstand storms and natural disasters: “NMI BPD has consistently stressed the need for resilient broadband network for our people. One that isn’t subject to massive outages during our frequent typhoons/storms.”
The office said that after the Trump Administration’s “Benefit of the Bargain” directive, the NMI was able to drive costs down significantly: “We had estimated that to deploy a hardened network it would cost more than the BEAD funds we had secured. After the Benefit of the Bargain subgrant round … we were able to achieve provisional subgrant awards that came in $50 million less than what we anticipated.” mbj
