(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . ARPA broadband access near Bridger may not happen after area double-contracted – Daily Montanan [1] ['Nicole Girten', 'More From Author', '- October'] Date: 2023-10-11 Montanans outside Bridger will have to wait and see if they’ll get broadband. In May, the state contracted two tele-communications companies to service the Bridger area outside Billings with funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, but two contracts aren’t allowed under the federal guidelines. In an effort to course correct, the state had to choose one company to get the more populous, and therefore more lucrative, region, while the other would be left with the surrounding rural areas. But the company CEO left with the less profitable end of that stick after a vote Wednesday, Richard Wardell of Tri County Telephone Association, said during the meeting he was not sure if it would go through with servicing the surrounding area. “It’s somewhat difficult, this decision,” said Wardell. Wardell said the area is rural and made up 40% of the company’s total proposal. The company was awarded $9.1 million in ARPA funds in December. “Our business case was built upon the entire project,” he said. Taking broadband to rural areas is expensive, and the mixup means an estimated 250 service locations, like households and businesses, are still in limbo depending on whether Tri County decides to move forward. At a meeting Wednesday morning, the ARPA Communications Advisory Commission voted, with Democrats against and Republicans and state officials in favor, to advise the governor to push back Tri County’s coverage area and reduce the amount of grant funding it will receive. The commission said it would leave specific dollar amounts up to the Department of Administration. This decision left the second company contracted by the state in the area, Qwest Communications International, to service the main Bridger area — but leaves Tri County to cover Bridger’s rural surroundings. The state said Tri County submitted an incomplete application, causing the overlap, but Tri County said all the information was technically included. Sen. Janet Ellis, D-Helena, attributed her opposing vote to the uncertainty of whether residents in the “donut” outside Bridger would be getting broadband after previously believing they would be. “Those are the Montanans I’m concerned about losing out,” she said. “I don’t think we have the information because the company doesn’t know if it’s going to be economical to service those people.” A spokesperson for the Governor’s Office told the Daily Montanan the governor will carefully review the commission’s recommendation upon receipt. At the meeting, Department of Administration Director Misty Ann Giles said taking both contracts away or re-scoring the projects were not options moving forward, as doing so could impact the other 58 ARPA contracts currently being executed. The department recommended Wednesday the overlapping territories be split up like they ultimately were in the commission’s recommendation because Qwest stood to lose more service locations than Tri County if the reverse took place, according to department attorney Julia Swingley. She said Tri County initially estimated it would cost $2.5 million for the entirety of its project, while Qwest was awarded more than $550,000 for just the Bridger area. If the governor accepts the commission’s recommendations, Qwest will serve 433 locations within Bridger, leaving an estimated 250 locations outside Bridger up to Tri County to service. Tri County said outside Bridger made up 40% of its total project, which excluding Bridger added up to just more than 630 service areas. Swingley said Tri County’s application for the region was incomplete, omitting a portion of service area locations in a specific format called a “shapefile,” which provides an outline for the service area boundary. She said this omission caused the overlap between the two companies to not be observed by the department. Director Giles said the department could not do that overlap analysis without that full shapefile to “compare apples to apples” as it had done with the other applications. Giles said the department alerted Tri County last year its application was incomplete and discovered it more recently when the department was preparing for other federal broadband funds. The partial omission of this file became a point of contention in the meeting, with Tri County arguing the information from the incomplete file could be found in other parts of the application. Amy Nerison on behalf of Tri County said the company reached out to then ARPA Director for the state Scott Mendenhall last November, who told them the overlap would be handled during the contract negotiations with the DOA. Nerison said CTC, a broadband advisory company contracted with the state, told them they were in compliance with the state. “And further acknowledged to Tri County that any oversight of the overlapping projects was a result of their (the state’s) flawed process, not ours,” Nerison said. President of CTC, a broadband advisory company, Joanne Hovis said they rely on shapefiles to see where projects overlap and see where there needs to be separation – and alert the department and applicant to these problems. She said her understanding of the situation was there was an inadvertent omission in an application. “We are not tasked and you do not pay us to do quality assurance and quality control on the applications that are submitted,” she said. “It would not be our working assumption going into application review that we have to effectively do quality checks, quality controls on the application. We use the data we have, we use it as efficiently as possible through our process as directed by the department.” Nerison said Tri County scored higher than Qwest for the project and said any oversight in overlapping projects was the fault of the commission’s process, not theirs. A Qwest representative said the company was unaware of any potential overlap with its project and noted that although it is not a scoring factor, the overall project costs are significantly lower than Tri County. Department of Commerce Director Scott Osterman asked what the root cause of the issue was, to which Senate President and commission chairman Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, said the parties involved all acted in good faith, and the commission has learned a lot of “coulda, shoulda, wouldas.” “I don’t think any of us enjoy that we’re having to make this decision, but it’s one that we need to make,” Ellsworth said. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2023/10/11/arpa-broadband-access-near-bridger-may-not-happen-after-area-double-contracted/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/