Section 206R-6 - Review of applications; confidential treatment; approval(a) Within five business days following the last day of the time period for submission of applications to the program, the department shall make all of the applications available for review in a publicly available electronic file posted on the department's website.(b) To the extent the information in an application or challenge falls under one or more of the exceptions to public disclosure in section 92F-13 or comprises commercially sensitive information, including information regarding the location of critical infrastructure, addresses of locations capable of receiving service under an existing provider's standard installation intervals, number of actual subscribers, subscriber addresses, non-public internal financial or network cost information, or vendor agreements, the department shall keep the information confidential upon request by: (1) An applicant for confidential treatment of an application, except that in no event shall a request for confidentiality prevent the publicly available portion of the application from including sufficient evidence to demonstrate the requirements of section 206R-5(b)(2) and 206R-5(b)(4); or(2) A challenging provider for confidential treatment of a challenge submitted pursuant to this section.(c) A broadband service provider that provides service within or directly adjacent to a proposed project area may submit a written challenge to any application within forty-five days of the department making the applications available for review pursuant to subsection (a). The challenge may: (1) Dispute an applicant's certification that a proposed project area is an unserved or underserved area or that no other federal or state program provides funding that is available to the applicant for a project for which program support is sought;(2) Attest to the challenging provider's existing or planned provision of broadband service within the applicant's proposed project area; or(3) Attest that the project may jeopardize the eligibility of federal funding for the challenging provider.(d) In reviewing applications and any accompanying challenge, the department shall review the proposed project areas to ensure that all awarded funds are used to deploy broadband infrastructure to unserved or underserved areas.(e) The department shall award program grants based on a scoring system that shall be released to the public at least thirty days prior to the first day of the time period for the submission of applications. The scoring system shall give the highest weight or priority to the following: (1) Projects proposing to serve a larger unserved or underserved geographic area;(2) Applicants with more experience and technical ability to successfully deploy and provide broadband service and more financial resources available to finance the project;(3) Projects for which fewer government funds and less support are necessary to deploy broadband infrastructure in an economically feasible manner;(4) Projects with a higher amount of matching funds proposed to be committed by the applicant;(5) High service speed thresholds proposed in the application and high scalability of the broadband infrastructure proposed to be deployed;(6) Applicants with a high ability to leverage nearby or adjacent broadband infrastructure to facilitate the proposed deployment of service to households;(7) Projects that do not duplicate any existing broadband infrastructure in the project area; and(8) Other factors the department determines to be reasonable, appropriate, and consistent with the purpose of facilitating the deployment of broadband infrastructure to unserved or underserved areas.Added by L 2021, c 225,§ 2, eff. 7/1/2021.