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Middlesex board hears BEAD process update; county signals support for All Points bid
Summary
County broadband staff updated supervisors on BEAD and local BEAD application support. Middlesex Broadband Authority recommended supporting All Points Broadband in the bid scoring; staff urged residents to register and pay nominal fees to reserve installation priority.
County broadband staff and the Middlesex Broadband Authority updated the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 4 about the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) competition and local buildout progress.
Staff said the BEAD bids will be scored by ZIP code and that internet service providers will compete to serve unserved households. The Broadband Authority voted to support All Points Broadband as the county’s preferred bidder; county staff noted that this local endorsement is part of the BEAD scoring matrix but that final awards will also depend on cost and technical readiness assessed by state reviewers.
All Points representatives and county staff reported that network engineers are in the field connecting to the backhaul provider and that the local All Points network should connect to the greater Internet this week, enabling initial customer connections. Staff urged residents to register at apbfiber.com and pay the one-time reservation fee (the provider advertised a nominal fee) to show demand and secure installation priority.
County staff also described a separate planning grant the county received to study digital inclusion issues — including affordability, digital literacy and potential community-based supports — and said staff will use a soon-to-be-published web survey and interactive map to collect resident input. Supervisors endorsed county staff and the Broadband Authority’s steps to support the BEAD application process and local outreach.
