Meet Brian, ND
January 16, 2025
North Dakota Still Has (Some) Work to Do Don’t tell Brian Newby that the last 1% underserved and unserved in his state will be easy to connect. While BEAD implementation is smaller in North Dakota, it doesn’t mean it’s any less significant! In a sit down with broadband.io, Newby, North Dakota’s Broadband Program Director, reports that only 1% of the state remains to connect. “North Dakota’s providers have made a big commitment to deliver fiber to their customers,” explains Newby. “We have a private carrier as well as blocks of telco coops who leveraged the universal service fund to put fiber in a large part of the state. In many areas they are delivering 100% fiber.” Vote for Better Broadband! Newby moved to North Dakota to serve as the ND Elections Director with the Secretary of State’s office in 2019. He says that the political climate, even in deeply red North Dakota, was what made him explore other options, but that the thing that pushed him to make the change was the broadband director opportunity. Prior to serving as North Dakota’s Broadband Program Director, Newby spent nearly 15 years working in elections. Before that, he had spent two decades at Sprint working in various positions ranging from Public Relations Administrator to Director of Strategic Planning. Newby took the broadband director position in March of 2023, after the state had allocated more than $100 million in CPF in a 2021 special session. In 2023, with BEAD now on the horizon, the state legislature deemed continuing education programs a higher CPF priority than broadband, shifting its allocation to just $37 million for 11 broadband projects reaching 2,160 locations. Awards were distributed in July 2023, so Newby says “carriers kind of lost a year” but should be done in 2025. Further complicating things, explains Newby is that “in North Dakota, there's only two seasons – winter and construction season.” With a background in elections, Newby is “used to cycles” and laments that it can be grinding. But he remains positive because he took the role with “both eyes wide open.”Rounding out the two-person state broadband office is Brian Nybakken, program manager, who joined in early 2024. Newby worked with Nybakken at the Secretary of State’s office and expresses that Nybakken is “great at getting stuff done,” which of course is imperative for an office of only two. BEAD (Process) Basher?You can hear the frustration in the slow march of the BEAD program when he relays that, “It’s been two years, and we haven't given out any money yet. That's hard. We've accomplished a lot, but we really have nothing to show for the program itself.”North Dakota’s Volume 2 was approved on October 1st for allocation of BEAD funds of $130.2 million. With the additional process of challenges and verifying the unserved and underserved, BSLs (broadband service locations) were not approved until November and the state’s application portal opened shortly before Thanksgiving, with round one closing at the end of this week. “The challenge process is a little microcosm of what’s going on at the NTIA – good people, bad processes,” says Newby.Despite delays, Newby is confident that unlike speculation on several states, North Dakota will be able to meet the 365-day deadline, with fiber. “We’ve stressed with the NTIA that we want to connect every BSL with fiber,” says Newby. “I am a little worried that the NTIA is going to push back and say our high-cost threshold is too high. But that’s what we want to do, and we have the money.” While he and the state have their fiber goals, Newby concedes that it is “almost inevitable that there'll be some fixed wireless.”Post-challenge, North Dakota has ~1700 BLS locations and ~200 CAIs that will need to be connected. He describes the unserved and underserved locations as “Swiss cheese,” with holes here and there. Second… and Third? Newby estimates that round one will cover nearly half (40%) of BEAD-eligible BSLs but admits that this is just a guess. He is hoping that waivers will motivate folks to cover the final 60%. “I've had carriers tell me that if the grants are taxable income and they must do a 25% match, they're not going to bid. We would like to look at having at least the state income tax waived. It’s small, almost just a symbolic gesture, but it would be successful [to drive more applicants].”Before getting into negotiations, Newby says they’ll run through two rounds and then “see where that takes us.” Beyond BEAD rounds, Newby explains that his office is touting adoption and education that teaches folks what ‘robust’ broadband could mean to their lives. “The concept that it's just like electricity, I refute that because as consumers, we don't decide if we have enough electricity coming into our house to run the refrigerator or use the air conditioning. You turn it on, you expect it to work. Calling broadband a utility ignores the fact that we need to talk to end-users.”Red Hats, Better BEAD? With January 20th right around the corner, I asked the vocal critic of the NTIA and BEAD to tell me what he thought was coming in terms of potential changes. “Because we're starting the first round, and other states that have already gone through it, there's no way to go back? I think we're going to see at best incremental changes on a go-forward basis. Many of the items related to the program are set into law.”He’s optimistic that the process will be significantly faster and hopeful that we’ll see more waivers for things like match requirements. “But until these waivers come, many won’t apply because this [applying] is a heavy lift. No company wants to hope for or ask for a waiver as directed by the NTIA because applying is just too much work.” North Dakota, No Snow A native of Kansas City, Newby’s career has taken him from Missouri and Kansas to DC, North Dakota, and now Redlands, California. Recently Newby’s wife took a job that relocated the Newbys and made Brian a ‘remote director’ while he sees the BEAD process through, traveling back and forth. Newby received a Master of Public Administration (MPA) as he wanted a career centered on strategy and planning. “I like working with entrepreneurs and in business and this is a way to be in government and in business.”Newby’s transition from elections to the broadband office was interrupted by a successful battle with intestinal cancer. He’s convinced that election administrators are all destined to get cancer in one form or another, relating to the stressful nature of the job. Thankfully, he’s now recovered and clear of cancer. Finally, while I tend to be hyperbolic and inflate state broadband leaders as ‘heroes without capes,’ Newby pushes back. “I have a hard time with thinking I am doing something special in ‘public service.’ I think what we're doing is important, but a lot of people work hard. We're not doing anything that anyone else wouldn't do.”
