Meet Taylre, TN
January 22, 2025
The Unserved and Underserved Have Left the Building in Tennessee I sat down with Taylre Beaty for broadband.io to learn how she and her team plan to disperse $813 million to connect Tennessee’s unserved and underserved with broadband. The state broadband director and her team of 7 reside within the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development in Nashville.Beaty took over the Tennessee broadband office in September of 2021 with a grant budget of $10-20 million annually. Of course, with BEAD, the budget is more than $800 million – with ARPA bringing in an additional $715 million. Good Ole Rocky TopThe significant ARPA investment still leaves another 170K BSLs that need to be served. Or put the way Beaty thinks of it, 425K Tennesseans left to serve.The state is not without its geographic challenges. Eastern Tennessee is mountainous, part of the Appalachian region, and dotted with “hollers” much like Kentucky’s eastern half. She describes eastern Tennessee as both rural, and dense in areas. Homes may be in the ‘middle of nowhere,’ but they are in the middle of nowhere with other homes. Central Tennessee’s challenges are rooted in a significant portion of limestone. West of Nashville and north of Memphis are extremely rural areas where homes may be more than ten miles apart. Beaty concedes that these locations may be the most challenging to serve due to high-cost thresholds. To complicate matters, Hurricane Helene left behind significant damage in this landlocked state, specifically on the east side of the state. Beaty says the communities impacted were not expecting this type of damage from a hurricane, because, well, why would they be? On the east side of Tennessee several interstates, bridges, and roads being out will impact providers’ ability to build. “A lot of areas in East Tennessee that were impacted by Helene are very rural and were already economically distressed,” says Beaty. “It will be a really difficult rebuild for them because the communities have numerous washed structures.” Grand Ole ARPA Tennessee received $715 million in ARPA money with CPF funds numbering $215 million, which followed $500 million to the state in ARPA SLFRF (State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds) that was applied to broadband. More specifically, SLFRF funds were allocated to connect BSLs with $450 million as well as drive broadband adoption with $50 million in education. For CPF funds, Beaty explains that the broadband office targeted a narrower geographic scope and introduced processes to use CPF as a “pilot program” for BEAD.ARPA SLFRF and CPF together will account for connecting 280,000 locations (700,000 Tennesseans) with 75 projects. To-date, $683 million has been invested. Between both ARPA programs, Beaty reports interest in the form of 215 applications and almost as many applicants. This, of course, is a good sign for interest in BEAD. A portion of ARPA funding, Beaty says, includes CAIs expanding availability to deliver interim broadband solutions to stem the tide before infrastructure builds are complete. BEAD’s Tennessee Waltz Tennessee’s 365-day deadline kicked in with volume 2 approval at the beginning of August. And like all the broadband directors I have spoken to, Beaty wishes the clock would have started with availability challenges being resolved and the ‘final’ BSL map approved. For Tennessee, approval came over the holidays. With this late approval, Beaty says Tennessee will begin to accept round one applications in early February. She hopes to turn decisions around quickly and announce the first round of recipients in April/May. This won’t leave a lot of time for what Beaty calls an emergency Round 2 for “cleanup for any of the areas that we didn't get applications or viable applications for.”“This is a challenge, the 365 days,” says Beaty. “But let’s not overshadow the fact that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We are confident that we are going to meet the deadline and we’re charging full steam ahead.” With 200 BEAD project areas set, the state broadband office has received at least one letter of intent for each and every one. “There should be interest in 100% of eligible areas,” says Beaty. One way Tennessee has encouraged participation is, as Beaty explains “We've pledged to be flexible with providers that if they win more than one project area unit in a county, we can work with them on ways to be flexible and leverage that funded network. If there are ways that those two projects can be combined and cut costs, we're open to that as well – and it could help us by creating more non-deployment funding.”Tennessee’s BEAD curious/interested providers have had the program guidebook in hand since September, so they know what they need to be ready with – and hopefully are prepared. Additionally, a pre-qualification phase wraps up at the end of this week to move forward on a fast-track. Interest to-date has featured many applicants from ARPA and providers of all shapes and sizes. “Big to small providers, municipalities, coops, private companies and more are all interested in deploying BEAD funds,” reports Beaty. “I do think that there's a large contingent of ISPs that are looking to expand their service territory in many areas.” We’re Going to Graceland“We're really optimistic that we'll be able to get full coverage with our BEAD funding and reach universal coverage,” says Beaty. “And we’re even optimistic, or at least hopeful, that we'll have some funding left over for non-deployment, specifically broadband adoption programs.” Other than a few outlier locations scattered here and there in the state, Beaty is confident that fiber will facilitate most of the state’s connections to reach unserved and underserved. She does agree that if there aren’t any viable applications for a project area, the state may need to turn to alternate technologies as the BEAD NOFO allows. “We're going to focus most of any non-deployment money around digital skills and workforce development training, finding ways to close knowledge gaps in both rural and urban communities.Tennessee is already deploying workforce development programs to ensure the workforce is available when the BEAD builds get underway, teaching traditional broadband infrastructure jobs (i.e. fiber splicing). In a state known for one style of music (country… or is it country AND western), providers are seeing extremely diverse challenges for different areas of the state. “Outside entities are looking at coming to Tennessee and are realizing, wow, this is not a one size fits all project. As a result, I think we are going to see more partnerships than we originally thought we would.” Home Sweet Home to MeBeaty is a native of Tennessee and she describes her family as a “product of rural Tennessee.” Growing up in East Tennessee, just south of Knoxville, her world view was heavily shaped by farms, livestock, and agriculture. College took her to University of Tennessee at Knoxville to obtain a degree in agricultural economics and progressed to Texas A&M for a masters in Agricultural Economics, culminating with a thesis on, you guessed it, Rural Broadband. Following grad school, Beaty worked for a Texas Congressman, himself invested in broadband. Then in DC, Beaty was recruited to work in the Trump administration in the USDA during the launch of the Reconnect Program.“My family has deep roots in rural Tennessee,” says Beaty, “My dad is one of 39 first cousins from a county of less than 5000. I have seen firsthand how it has transformed a community that is so far away from everything and how it has increased their access to critical services and opportunities while being able to stay in their rural community.”“These are people who have felt a lot like they've kind of been forgotten or left off the grid, literally, for such a long time that to see how this is impacting their lives, their homes, their families, their businesses, their quality of life is huge,” says Beaty. “I also have the other side of my family still without access to Internet in a rural community on the other side of the state. It’s what gets me up and excited every day.”
