Activity around the federal BEAD program continues to percolate now that states have started passing out funding to their subgrantees and the first locations powered by BEAD are connected.
Impact: According the BEAD Progress Dashboard kept by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the agency has approved the final proposals of all but two states (California and Illinois). The final proposals of two additional states (Mississippi and Oklahoma) still need approval by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and then those four states will need to sign their award agreements before they can start distributing funds. Though Benton Institute data from mid-May showed that less than half of the program’s $21 billion in deployment funds had been distributed, most states have started moving forward with their BEAD deployments. In Nebraska, an Ogallala farmhouse recently became the first home connected through a BEAD-funded deployment. Nebraska FWA provider Vistabeam did the honors, connecting the house using next-gen fixed wireless equipment that delivers 800/200 Mbps speeds. But other providers in Nebraska haven’t been as quick to deployment, with the state revealing that three of its 10 subgrantee award winners failed to sign their agreements, leading the state broadband office to open another round of bidding for the locations those providers—Amazon Leo among them—had committed to covering. In Louisiana, the first state to make it all the way through the BEAD approval process and start awarding funding, Texas-based provider Nextlink Internet activated the first BEAD-funded tower in Bienville Parish, providing gig-speed FWA connectivity to communities in northwestern Louisiana.
But even with the small signs of progress, concerns persist about how small providers, particularly those that won big awards, are going to manage to meet their BEAD commitments over the next half-decade or so. Analysts and industry experts congregated at the Fiber Connect conference recently urged those providers to focus on improving their operational excellence now that states have started distributing their funding awards. The complexity of the BEAD program and its deployments has experts worried that the program’s demands could end up clashing with the limited resources of these smaller providers, leading to inefficiencies and problems down the line. It’s also possible that as more states work through the grant process with award winners, more providers could opt not to sign those agreements. That could lead to additional bidding rounds in more states than just Nebraska. And at least one conference participant warned that more private equity involvement in broadband expansion and the BEAD program increases expectations around performance, predictability, and returns, something smaller providers also will need to be mindful of.
Rural wireline providers, meanwhile, are trying to protect their turf. Just last week, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association requested that NTIA either release BEAD winners’ performance testing itself or compel states to do so. The industry group claims that making the performance testing results public will provide insight into the potential success or shortcomings of each BEAD subgrantee that won funding. Those results would provide consumers and policymakers with insight into download and upload speeds, latency, and network availability of each provider. The group appears to have concerns that non-fiber providers will be able to meet all the BEAD requirements and wants FWA and satellite Internet operators to provide proof that they’re up to the task. A lot of that concern swirls around SpaceX subsidiary Starlink, which won nearly $740 billion to cover more than 475,000 locations around the country.
