The Puerto Rico Office of Management and Budget (OMB), through its Broadband Program (BP), seeks qualified entities to deploy and operate public WiFi hotspots identified within municipalities (Grant Program). In addition to the required WiFi hotspots, Applicants can request funding to deploy additional infrastructure supporting fixed and mobile wireless broadband service throughout Puerto Rico. Supporting infrastructure will include but not be limited to smart poles, towers, aerial and buried fiber backhaul, microwave backhaul, and primary and backup power systems. The WiFi service within identified WiFi zones shall be offered to the public free of charge and Grant Program Recipients will be required to provide operations, maintenance and upgrades of the WiFi hotspots for at least ten years.

The Government of Puerto Rico Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is seeking responses from qualified vendors (Respondents) to design and implement resilient power systems and hardened infrastructure for telecommunications facilities in Puerto Rico. The Program’s goal is to facilitate reliable, resilient power and hardened infrastructure to key telecommunications facilities to minimize the loss of internet and telecommunications connectivity to Puerto Ricans. This is Phase I of this hardening and resilient power RFP and is intended for “shovel ready” projects that can be implemented rapidly. There will be subsequent phases of this initiative for projects not yet shovel ready. The OMB is administering $15 million in this initial round of funding to successful Respondents.

The Puerto Rico Broadband Program (“PRBP”) of the Puerto Rico Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) was created pursuant to Executive Order No. EO-2022-040 (“Broadband Program Executive Order”)1, for the purposes set forth thereunder, including the coordination, authorization, and execution of the disbursement of local and federal funds allocated to Puerto Rico for broadband programs, among other things.

Through this RFP, the Government Parties intend to choose a Selected Proponent that can provide Grant Administrator Services, as defined in Section 2.2 of this RFP, for the PRBP’s projects listed in Exhibit 1 of this RFP (collectively, the “Projects”) through certain Grant Administration Agreement (“GAA”), which will be funded with the Available Funding for the Scope of Work, as defined in Section 2.4 of this RFP. The Government Parties will publish a specimen of the GAA through the smartisland.pr.gov soon after this RFP is published.

The objective of this RFP is for the Government Parties to obtain proposals to support and conduct an ongoing study of consumer fixed and mobile performance across the region, evaluating the QoS of fixed broadband and mobile connectivity from the perspective of end-users.