Docomo Pacific: 'CNMI deserves competition not a monopoly'

 By Pacific Island Times News Staff

Docomo Pacific warned against the CNMI’s plan to award a federal grant for internet upgrades to a single company, saying it would create a monopoly that would compromise service delivery and dampen pricing competition.

“Giving one company control of all infrastructure threatens jobs, service quality and disaster preparedness," Docomo states in its comment on the CNMI Broadband Policy and Development’s draft final proposal related to the award of Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment’s subgrant.

"Reliance on a single provider puts the community at risk; outages can knock out ATMs, payroll systems, 911 access, phone and internet services for days,” Docomo said.

According to Marianas Variety, BPD plans to award the subgrant to IT&E, which the agency said “requested the lowest amount of funds.”

Docomo Pacific said its protest “is not an attempt to block investment; it is an effort to ensure federal funds are used as intended and that the selection process remains open, fair and in full compliance with (the National Telecommunications Administration) as well as local government guidelines.”

The NTIA-administered BEAD program will allocate $42.45 billion in funding to states and territories to connect communities and create good-paying jobs.

In a policy notice issued on June 11, NTIA restructured the BEAD program, which effectively voided earlier proposals and required states and territories to reopen their selection processes under a cost-focused, technology-neutral framework.

The new rules prioritize the lowest total cost per location and remove the prior preference for fiber.

“The company recognizes the durability and reliability of underground fiber,” Docomo said.

“During the recent BEAD subgrant process, the company submitted a comprehensive proposal,” Docomo said.

While it offered a bid of $1.78 million, Docomo said BPD’s provisional award went to a single provider at around $31 million—more than 16 times their cost.

"BPD has received public comments during our public comment period and is reviewing them," Glen Hunter, the CNMI’s special assistant for Broadband Policy and Development, said when reached for comment.

"BPD does not have any comment at the moment other than that we are reviewing all the public comments and finalizing the draft CNMI BEAD final proposal," he added.

In a statement posted on Facebook, BPD said it received three priority broadband project applications for each of the 21 BEAD project-funded areas for buried, hardened, resilient, end-to-end fiber network deployment.

For buried fiber applications, BPD said IT&E requested $30 million,

GTA, $60 million, and $90 million.

“The $1.7 million mentioned in Docomo’s public comment letter was for aerial hybrid fiber-coaxial network deployment on utility poles,” BPD said. “This did not meet the standard for Priority Broadband Project for any of our project areas.”

Docomo pointed out that the BEAD program is designed to ensure every American can access reliable, affordable high-speed internet.

However, it said, awarding the entire grant to a single, high-cost fiber project “appears to ignore” the federal and local guidance.

“Competition and redundancy are essential to keeping internet services reliable and affordable. In markets with multiple broadband choices, prices have fallen and speeds have risen,” Docomo said.

Over the past year, the carrier said it has twice lowered its prices and increased speeds at no extra cost.

Docomo said, the CNMI community "deserves competition, redundancy, and fair pricing—not a monopoly funded with taxpayer dollars."

In its Facebook post, BPD said: "We selected and submitted the lowest cost to NTIA for approval along with our methodology for defining Priority Broadband Project for each project area. They said we had met their requirements and were satisfied. We moved forward with posting our draft final proposal for public comment as instructed."

This article has been updated to include additional comments from BPD.

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