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) “Assistant secretary” means the assistant secretary of the United States Department of Commerce for Communications and Information.

            (3) “Broadband data maps” means the maps created in accordance with the provisions of 47 U.S.C. § 642.

            (4) “Broadband service” means deployed mass-market retail internet access service with a minimum of one hundred megabits per second, or Mbps, download and at least twenty megabits per second upload transmission speeds. This definition has the meaning given by the Federal Communications Commission under rules and guidance that are in effect as of the date of enactment of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

            (5) “Broadband-serviceable location” means a business or residential location in the United States at which fixed broadband internet access service is, or can be, installed. See IIJA, P.L. 117-58, §60102(a)(2)(h), 135 Stat. 429, 1184 (2021). In the Third Broadband Data Collection Report and Order, the Commission adopted “as fundamental definition of a ‘location’ for purposes of the broadband-serviceable location fabric: a business or residential location in the United States at which fixed broadband Internet access service is, or can be, installed.” See Establishing the Digital Opportunity Data Collection; Modernizing the FCC Form 477 Data Program, WC Docket Nos. 19§195, 11§10, Third Report and Order, 36 FCC Rcd 1126m 1175 para. 126 (2021).

            (6) “Community anchor institution” means an entity such as a school, library, health clinic, health center, hospital or other medical provider, public safety entity, institution of higher education, public housing organization, or community support organization that facilitates greater use of broadband service by vulnerable populations, including but not limited to low-income individuals, unemployed individuals, children, the incarcerated, and aged individuals.

            (7) “Cooperative” means a corporation organized pursuant to Part I of Chapter 4 of Title 12 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of 1950 or a corporation that becomes subject to those provisions pursuant to La. Rev. Stat. 12:401 et seq.

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

            (9) “Eligible costs” means costs that are eligible for BEAD program funding as specified by the assistant secretary.

            (10) “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, La. Rev. Stat. 45:844.41 et seq., prior to July 1, 2021, with respect to providing such services, a cooperative, or any partnership thereof.

            (11) “Eligible location” means an unserved location or underserved location.

            (12) “Eligible parish” means any parish with unserved or underserved broadband-serviceable locations.

            (13) “Enforceable commitment” means any location that is already subject to a legally enforceable federal, state, or local commitment to deploy broadband.

            (14) “Extremely high-cost per location threshold” means a BEAD subsidy cost per location to be utilized during the grantee selection process described in Section IV.B.7 of the BEAD NOFO above which the office may decline to select an application if use of an alternative technology meeting the BEAD program’s technical requirements would be less expensive.

            (15) “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. A child under the age of eighteen living with his parent or guardian is considered to be part of the same household as his parent or guardian.

            (16) “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.

            (17) “Local government” means a parish, municipality, or school board.

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

            (19) “Project” means an undertaking by an eligible grant recipient to construct and deploy infrastructure for the provision of broadband service. A project may constitute a single unserved or underserved broadband-serviceable location or a grouping of broadband-serviceable locations in which not less than eighty percent of broadband-serviceable locations served by the project are unserved locations or underserved locations. If an overall project area crosses from one eligible parish into one or more eligible adjacent parishes, for the purposes of this Subpart, the project shall be determined to be located in the parish where the greatest number of unserved or underserved households are proposed to be served.

            (20) “Reliable broadband service” means broadband service that the broadband data maps show are accessible to a location via any of the following:

            (a) Fiber-optic technology.

            (b) Cable modem or hybrid fiber-coaxial technology.

            (c) Terrestrial fixed wireless technology utilizing entirely licensed spectrum or using a hybrid of licensed and unlicensed spectrum.

            (21) “Shapefile” means a file format for storing, depicting, and analyzing geospatial data depicting broadband coverage, comprised of several component files.

            (22) “Underserved location” means an underserved location as defined in the IIJA and the BEAD NOFO.

            (23) “Unserved location” means an unserved location as defined in the IIJA and the BEAD NOFO.

            Acts 2023, No. 383, §1.