By: Wesley Muller – Louisiana Illuminator
Louisiana has led the nation for its quick rollout and management of federal broadband grants and is about to spearhead the country’s largest ever infrastructure investment to bring affordable high-speed internet to every corner of the state. But not everyone is celebrating the state’s success.
At a legislative hearing Monday, state lawmakers discussed policy ideas to try to rectify an unintentional side effect of the many infrastructure projects currently underway across Louisiana. Occasionally, construction crews have accidentally damaged underground pipes and cables while trying to bury fiber optic lines that provide broadband service.
Most of the accidents are the result of miscommunication among contractors for the internet service providers (ISP) and the local governments and utility companies. Poor record keeping by local governments and utilities is also to blame.
Another factor contributing to the problem has to do with the level of cooperation from some of the state’s legacy internet service providers, such as Cox Communications, Sparklight, Charter Communications and other telecom giants. Having long dominated the ISP market in Louisiana, those telecom giants are now facing more competition as a result of the federal subsidies, and they don’t want others to know where their cables are buried, though they claim it’s a matter of national security and not about competition.
Guy Cormier, executive director of the Police Jury Association of Louisiana, said he knows of some incidents that occurred after a subcontractor failed to get a local permit or failed to call Louisiana’s 811 dig safety hotline before starting a project. Other cases occurred because the local government had no permitting process, he said.
Minden Mayor Nick Cox told lawmakers he is very thankful for the broadband expansion currently underway in his town but expressed some dismay over some “unethical” and inexperienced boring contractors that have caused problems. Boring is a construction technique that uses a pressurized stream of water to tunnel underneath a road or sidewalk to allow for the burial of a pipe or cable.
“We call them ‘bore and ignore contractors’ because they just bore and ignore the problems,” Cox said.
On one project, a crew removed an entire section of a sidewalk in a busy area that sees heavy foot traffic. On another, a crew stole water from a city fire hydrant to use for their boring job, Cox said.
When accidents happen, contractors often fail to alert the city or ignore city inspectors when they arrive on the scene. It has gotten to the point where Cox said he’s had to assign city employees to “babysit” some of the contractors while they work, he said.
The accidents are not always the fault of the contractors. Many cases of damage occur when utility companies or municipalities cannot accurately mark the location of their underground pipes and cables. In some cases, the infrastructure was buried many decades ago, and the town either never mapped it at the time or has since lost the maps, according to others who testified Monday.
Cox admitted that some of the boring in Minden has revealed underground infrastructure the city did not have mapped.
Swyft Fiber CEO Jason Hunt told lawmakers that his company has struck underground infrastructure eight times while burying roughly 1,300 miles of fiber optic cable. In all of those cases, the pipes and cables were inaccurately marked, he said.
Cormier said such accidents are to be expected with the level of progress Louisiana has made with broadband expansion.
“I have colleagues throughout the other 49 states, and when I talk about where we are on broadband, it blows their mind,” Cormier said. “Some of them are just starting to set up their broadband offices now.”
State Rep. Daryl Deshotel, R-Marksville, who has spearheaded much of the legislative framework for rural broadband expansion, created the Louisiana Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity in 2020. Louisiana was one of the only states in the nation to have such an office at that time, and it gave the state an edge when it came to applying for federal dollars under President Joe Biden’s infrastructure investments.
Louisiana was ranked best in the nation for its handling of federal broadband subsidies, according to a recent report from the right-leaning think tank American Enterprise Institute. Also, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance’s Digital Equity Index ranked Louisiana sixth in the country for how well the state government and local governments are addressing digital equity.
The federal subsidies are coming from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act (APRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
From ARPA, Louisiana received $176 million and is awarding the money through what it calls the Granting Unserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities (GUMBO 1.0) grant program. Roughly 88% of those projects are either currently under construction or are complete.
The much bigger investment is coming this fall with $1.3 billion allocated to Louisiana from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Already, the state Office of Broadband has begun preparing by vetting and prequalifying all of the internet service providers that want to compete for the grant money, which the state will distribute as GUMBO 2.0.
Veneeth Iyengar, Office of Broadband director, said the grant program has attracted a number of new businesses to the state that will compete for the money. GUMBO 1.0 saw participation from 18 providers, while GUMBO 2.0 had more than double that number apply and saw 33 companies pass pre-qualification screening, he said.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle took time out of Monday’s House Commerce Committee hearing to praise Iyengar for his office’s progress. The hearing was part of Deshotel’s effort to keep the momentum going and try to foresee problems likely to surface once the bigger grant program takes off, such as crews damaging underground cables and pipes.
“What we’re trying to do in this case is head off what I think is going to be a serious, serious issue,” Deshotel said. “I tried to address this during the regular session, but this is going to come back, and we need to make sure everyone is on the same page and understand what’s going to happen when we deploy $1.355 billion of capital in the state at the same time. We’re going to have a massive amount of hit utilities.”
One policy consideration to address the problem includes requiring more precise mapping of underground infrastructure. During the 2024 regular session, Deshotel tried to amend a bill to add such a requirement but later withdrew it after a Senate committee questioned whether it would benefit his son.
Weeks before Deshotel inserted that language into the bill, his son, Noah Deshotel, registered a business that would “deliver comprehensive online maps for Louisiana’s utility lines,” according to the Times-Picayune.
Still, the problem of striking underground utilities exists, and any new location disclosure requirements are likely to face opposition from the major telecom companies.
The committee heard testimony from the Louisiana Internet and Television Association, which represents the state’s legacy telecom giants, some of which tried challenging the grants in an attempt to keep competition out of the state.
Executive director Lauren Chauvin told lawmakers her organization’s members are opposed to anything that would lead to the public disclosure of the location of their infrastructure. Such a law would make the companies a target for terrorists and vandals, she said.
Deshotel, who used to own a small internet service provider, wasn’t buying the argument. Under his questioning, the association’s members revealed that the vast majority of their cables are aerial and hanging from utility poles where they can be located by anyone who walks outside and looks. The same goes for underground fiber optic cables, which are usually marked with plastic utility posts or domes that protrude a few feet out of the ground with brightly-colored wording that says a fiber optic cable is buried directly below.
The LIT members also admitted that they know of no such incidents in which someone attacked their cables or utility poles.
“We have a once in a lifetime opportunity — a once in a generation opportunity — to understand what is actually underneath our ground … No one’s trying to get your secret sauce information,” Deshotel said.