As used in this Subpart, the following terms have the following meanings:

            (1) “Agriculture” means the commercial planting, growing, harvesting, production, storage, processing, marketing, distribution, or export of any agricultural product, including but not limited to farm products, livestock and livestock products, poultry and poultry products, milk and dairy products, fruit and other horticultural products, and seafood and aquacultural products.

            (2) “Broadband service” means deployed internet access service with a minimum of one hundred megabits per second (Mbps) download and at least twenty megabits per second upload transmission speeds. The office shall have the authority to determine whether any particular technology can reliably meet or exceed any internet transmission speed threshold.

            (3) “Cooperative” means a corporation organized under Part I of Chapter 2 of Title 12 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of 1950 or a corporation who becomes subject to those provisions pursuant to La. Rev. Stat. 12:401 et seq.

            (4) “Director” means the executive director of the office of broadband development and connectivity within the division of administration.

            (5) “Economically distressed parish” means an unserved area that is in need of expansion of business and industry and the creation of jobs, giving consideration to unemployment, per capita income, and the number of residents receiving public assistance within that unserved area.

            (6) “Eligible grant recipient” means a provider of broadband service, including a provider operated by a local government if the local government is compliant with the Local Government Fair Competition Act prior to July 1, 2021, with respect to providing such services, a cooperative, or any partnership thereof.

            (7) “Eligible parishes” means any parish with unserved structures.

            (8) “Eligible project” means a discrete and specific project located in an unserved area of an eligible parish seeking to provide broadband service to homes, households, businesses, educational facilities, healthcare facilities, and community anchor points not currently served. A project that is primarily engaged in middle-mile, backhaul, or similar work is not an eligible project. The inclusion of middle-mile, backhaul, or similar capacity is permissible in an eligible project, if the capacity does not otherwise exist and is necessary for the project’s last-mile broadband connectivity to end users. If a contiguous project area crosses from one eligible parish into one or more eligible adjacent parishes, for the purposes of this Subpart, the project shall be deemed to be located in the parish where the greatest number of unserved households are proposed to be served.

            (9) “Household” means any individual or group of individuals who are living together at the same address as one economic unit. A household may include related and unrelated persons. An “economic unit” consists of all adult individuals contributing to and sharing in the income and expenses of a household. An adult is any person eighteen years or older. If an adult has no or minimal income, and lives with someone who provides financial support to him, both people shall be considered part of the same household. Children under the age of eighteen living with their parents or guardians are considered to be part of the same household as their parents or guardians.

            (10) “Infrastructure” means existing facilities, equipment, materials, and structures that an internet service provider has installed either for its core business or public enterprise purposes. Examples include but are not limited to copper wire, coaxial cable, optical cable, loose tube cable, communication huts, conduits, vaults, patch panels, mounting hardware, poles, generators, batteries and cabinets, network nodes, network routers, network switches, microwave relays, microwave receivers, site routers, outdoor cabinets, towers, easements, rights-of-way, and buildings or structures owned by the entity that are made available for location or collocation purposes.

            (11) “Infrastructure costs” means costs directly related to the construction of broadband infrastructure for the extension of broadband service for an eligible project, including installation, acquiring or updating easements, backhaul infrastructure, and testing costs. The term does not include overhead or administrative costs.

            (12) “Local government” means a parish, municipality, or school board, or any instrumentality thereof.

            (13) “Office” means the office of broadband development and connectivity within the division of administration.

            (14) “Prospective broadband recipient” means a household, home, business, educational facility, healthcare facility, community anchor point, agricultural operation, or agricultural processing facility that is currently unserved and is identified in an application submitted in accordance with this Subpart.

            (15) “Shapefile” means a file format for storing, depicting, and analyzing geospatial data depicting broadband coverage, comprised of several component files, such as a Main file (.shp), an Index file, (.sbx) and a dBASE table (.dbf).

            (16) “Unserved” means, notwithstanding any other provision of law, any federal funding awarded to or allocated by the state for broadband deployment shall not be used, directly or indirectly, to deploy broadband infrastructure to provide broadband internet service in any area of the state where broadband internet service of at least one hundred megabits per second download and twenty megabits per second upload is available from at least one internet service provider.

            (17) “Unserved area” means a designated geographic area that is presently without access to broadband service, as defined in this Section, offered by a wireline or fixed wireless provider. Areas included in an application where a provider has been designated to receive funds through other state or federally funded programs designed specifically for broadband deployment shall be considered served if such funding is intended to result in the initiation of activity related to construction of broadband infrastructure in such area within twenty-four months of the expiration of the sixty-day period related to such application established pursuant to La. Rev. Stat. 51:2370.4(C).

            Acts 2021, No. 477, §1, eff. July 1, 2021; Acts 2022, No. 288, §2; Acts 2023, No. 383, §3A.