…in new guidance from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the agency said it prohibits states “from explicitly or implicitly setting the LCSO [low-cost service option] rate a subgrantee must offer.” NTIA officials also made it clear that, even if California obtained the funding, ISPs could exempt themselves from the proposed low-cost broadband bill simply by applying for BEAD funding, Boerner told us. She said the NTIA’s new guidance is a “complete farce,” since ISPs are getting public money to build infrastructure and won’t have to commit to offering low-income plans at specific rates.

”All they would have to do to get exempted from AB 353 [the $15 broadband bill] would be to apply to the BEAD program," she said. “Doesn’t matter if their application was valid, appropriate, granted, or they got public money at the end of the day and built the projects—the mere application for the BEAD program would exempt them from 353, if it didn’t jeopardize from $1.86 billion to begin with. And that was a tradeoff I was unwilling to make.”