§2370.2. Definitions
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 trans
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§2370.2. Definitions
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 R.S. 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 R.S. 51:2370.4(C).