Texas Opens $729M Broadband Grant Applications

July 17, 2024 – Texas requested applications for the second round of its Bringing Online Opportunities to Texas Program, which has a total investment of $729.9 million, on Thursday.

The BOOT Program is a competitive grant program intended to help providers, municipalities, and cooperatives build last-mile broadband connections to addresses in the state. The money is awarded to projects that are specifically built to enable work, education, and health monitoring in unserved and underserved locations. 

Texas’s Broadband Development Office dedicated all of the $438.9 million awarded to it through the federal Capital Projects Fund, a COVID-19 relief program, to BOOT. The first round of BOOT expended $12.3 million. 

For the second round of funding, the BDO is allocating $303.4 million of the state’s $500.5 million American Rescue Plan Act award, making the total BOOT funding a combined $729.9 million. 

Proposed broadband projects must be “designed to deliver, upon completion, service that reliably meets or exceeds symmetrical speeds of 1” gigabit per second (Gbps), said the BDO. Unless “it would be impractical because of geography, topography, or excessive cost”, in which case symmetrical 100 megabits per second (Mbps) will be required.

The minimum grant award under the project is $1 million, with the maximum $125 million. Matching funds are not required but the office will give additional consideration to those projects that propose a cost share of at least ten percent of the total project costs.

Applicants must ensure that at least 20 percent of the total project locations are considered unserved or underserved, with preference given to applications that maximize that percentage. The extent to which the applicant develops a low cost service option that meets 100/20 Mbps for all of its project locations will also improve the application.

Applications will be scored on project budget and sustainability, applicant qualifications for organizational, managerial, financial and technical capacity, affordability, and community impact such as workforce development and digital literacy programs. They will also be evaluated based on the proposed cost effectiveness, cost per pass, and total served locations. 

Individuals, corporations, organizations and government bodies will have a 30-day window to submit challenges to any application relating to whether the applicant or project should receive an award based on the stated requirements. 

Projects must be completed by the end of 2026. Texas anticipates to announce awards in November.

The state office submitted its initial broadband expansion proposal to the federal government on December 23 and requested that applicants for its BOOT program provide Federal Communications Commission-issued location IDs associated with their applications.

In a newsletter, the BDO said it "identified some common issues with FCC location ID submissions. To move forward, the BDO will remove duplicative or ineligible locations from application address lists."

Meanwhile, in November 2023, the state’s voters created a $1.5 billion Broadband Infrastructure Fund that will support 911 service upgrades, pole replacement and other broadband initiatives statewide. The state transferred these funds from its general revenue fund to the BIF on January 8.