With most states scheduled to submit their final proposals to the National Telecommunications & Information Administration by September 4, state broadband offices have been releasing provisional BEAD awards for the last several weeks, with new announcements occurring nearly every day.
Impact: As of the end of August, 30 states had released their subgrantee selections using a mix of technologies, with fiber constituting around two-thirds of the awards. Four states (California, Idaho, Oregon, and Texas) have asked for and received extensions on their final proposal deadline, with Texas scheduled to be last to submit on October 27. According to a tracker put together by Telecompetitor, Starlink parent company SpaceX has been awarded funding in 27 states but has only been the top awardee in Montana with $119.3 million. SpaceX won its second-largest amount in Ohio with $51. 7 million and has accumulated nearly $356 million across the 27 states where it received funding. At the start of the provisional announcements, SpaceX was rather unhappy with the funding distribution in several states led by Republican governors and wanted the National Telecommunications & Information Administration to direct some states to revise their funding allocations.
Because it has been awarded significant funding across the program as a whole, it’s not known whether the satellite operator will continue to advocate against the allocation process in states where it wanted more money. Amazon’s Project Kuiper has not been the top awardee in any state but has been awarded $122.2 million in funding in 14 of 30 states so far despite barely having 100 satellites in orbit and a tight deadline to meet its ultimate goal of building a low-Earth orbit constellation of nearly 3,300 satellites. Montana and Colorado both gave Kuiper more than $25 million toward their BEAD deployments.
Wireline providers have also been very active in the bidding process, with Comcast awarded the most BEAD funds in five of the 22 states where it has won awards to deploy a combination of fiber and hybrid-fiber coax. The cable operator topped the funding lists in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and collected its top award thus far in the Keystone state with $229.3 million. Total Comcast awards came to $799.2 million through August. Brightspeed, which had the most BEAD-eligible locations when those first started being tracked, has won funding in 11 states. As of August 26, the company had claimed more than $222 million in Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin to cover 73,709 passings, but that amount had increased to $332.7 million by the end of the month. AT&T has been active nine states, collecting $514.7 million, and won the highest amount of funding in three of those (Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee), garnering $241.7 million just in Mississippi. Verizon received a combined $183.6 million across six states and has one win under its belt in Delaware (which it also won in the original BEAD funding). Consolidated has won funds in four states, while Uniti (as Windstream) has participated in three states to date and ended up the big winner with $118.9 million in Georgia.
Early data from the BEAD Benefit of the Bargain round indicates that most state broadband offices have decided to stick with fiber where possible, despite the Trump Administration removing its designation as the program’s preferred technology. With 60% roughly of states reporting, only a few states have selected low-Earth orbit satellite providers to cover the majority of their BEAD-eligible locations. Even so, the amount of funding won by SpaceX and Amazon’s Project Kuiper has increased significantly in the new round of funding at the expense of fiber providers, which have seen their percentages per state decrease. The push and pull between fiber and satellite broadband has dominated headlines around the BEAD program for months and that will likely continue as NTIA evaluates each state’s final proposal, especially if they receive outside pressure to make changes to state decisions. Fixed wireless also remains part of the picture, with the technology recently garnering funding for 40% of BEAD locations in New Mexico and 39% in Washington. In Kansas, state broadband officials dedicated more than 50% of BEAD funding to a hybrid/fixed wireless combination. With the three largest states by area and the largest three by population still left to report, it’s anyone’s guess how the remainder of the Benefit of the Bargain round plays out technology-wise and how NTIA will proceed with the approval phase.
