ARCHIVED Federal Funding Account Priority Areas

• ARCHIVED PRIORITY AREAS PAGE

  UPDATE (April 7, 2023): This is an archive page, for historical reference. The Federal Funding Account Public Map and data have been updated and revised based on input and feedback.

  Please visit the Federal Funding Account Last-Mile homepage for current information.

Update, March 3, 2023

In recent weeks, we heard from stakeholders about the first priority areas map that:

• Unserved locations were not appearing on the map.
• Equity needed to be more deeply incorporated into the process and applicants need to be able to draw their own projects and leverage existing metrics for disadvantaged communities.
• The CPUC should provide more data to enable applicants to evaluate areas.

Based on this feedback the CPUC is working to implement the following changes:

• Remove pre-defined priority areas.
• Update the underlying data to better reflect the number of unserved locations.
• Award up to 20 points from “existing broadband service need” category, based only on disadvantaged community indicators.

Following the release of the new map, the CPUC will provide access to a User/Applicant Tool that will provide informational engineering, economic and business case data to potential applicants as they develop and prepare their applications. In June, the CPUC will provide access to the grant application portal and begin accepting applications later that month.

Allocations for each county

SB 156 requires that, of the $2 billion dollars ($2,000,000,000) appropriated to the commission to fund last-mile broadband infrastructure in the Budget Act of 2021, the commission must initially allocate $1 billion ($1,000,000,000) for last-mile broadband projects in urban counties and $1 billion ($1,000,000,000) for last-mile broadband projects in rural counties (see Public Utilities Code Section 281(n)).

Each county, regardless of size, has $5 million set aside for it. The remaining funding is allocated based on each county’s proportionate share of California households without access to 100 Mbps broadband internet service.

This statutory requirement is set to expire on June 30, 2023. However, the CPUC adopted this allocation methodology in Decision D.22-04-055, and, as such, the county allocations will continue beyond the June 30, 2023 statutory expiration.

Please refer to the Federal Funding Account Last-Mile homepage for updated information.

An archived, non-current version of the late-2022 Priority Areas webpage is available here: Priority Areas Archive (ca.gov)