‘Last yard’ or ‘10-year slog’? Here's how BEAD is progressing in 4 states

The good news about the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program? Shovels could be in the ground in some states as soon as next summer. The bad news? One state official said it likely won’t be able to finish its subgrantee selection process until 2026 and dubbed BEAD a “10-year slog.” Here’s everything you need to know about what officials from Nevada, New York, Massachusetts and North Dakota said about the program:

• Nevada is using a combination of “13 or 14 different funding sources” to construct a 2,500-mile middle-mile network that will be deployed “within 10 miles of 80% of our unserved locations in the state.”
• New York: Joshua Brietbart, SVP of ConnectALL at Empire State Development, said New York is still going through its challenge process results but so far it’s identified about 95,000 locations for BEAD.
• Massachusetts: While it waits for the gears of government to turn on the BEAD front, Baldino said the state decided to allocate a portion of the $175 million it received in Capital Projects Fund money from the federal government to preemptively start closing that gap via the aptly-named Gap Networks Grant Program.
• North Dakota has about 5,000 locations it needs to reach with BEAD money. But unlike Nevada and Massachusetts, it hasn’t yet decided how to set its project sizes. That’s in part because the state isn’t really sure who—if anyone—will bid.