BEAD Affordability Plans

A look at each state’s response to the National Technology and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program Notice of Funding Opportunity’s (NOFO) Requirement 20 on Middle-Class Affordability and Requirement 16 for a Low-Cost Broadband Service Option.  This list also provides background information on the degree of participation in BEAD by municipal, tribal, and other government-owned networks (GONs) in each state. Thirteen states have affordability strategies that meet the NOFO requirements in a manner that should enhance private-sector participation and encourage the most rapid rollout of connectivity to unserved areas.  A significant element of most of their proposals is to not require specific monthly rates for each of the speed tiers. Instead, the states propose to determine eligibility either by comparing providers’ applications to the “reasonable comparability benchmark” defined in the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Urban Rate Survey, or by requiring providers to charge the same rates in areas of their state that qualify to receive BEAD subsidies as they charge in unsubsidized areas. There are eight states—Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia—that will determine providers’ affordability by reference to the benchmark rate for any given service area determined by the FCC’s Urban Rate Survey. There are five States—Alabama, Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Oregon—that require providers to charge no more in BEAD-subsidized locations than they do in unsubsidized areas of their state or any other state. (Alabama, however, uses this geographic price-parity approach only for scoring Middle-Class Affordability, while requiring a specific rate for the Low-Cost Service Option.) There are 11 states—Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Vermont, along with American Samoa—that have adopted an affordability strategy that scores providers’ proposed pricing relative to other providers that apply for BEAD funding, rather than against any objective standard of affordability. The other 24 states* and four territories (including the District of Columbia) surveyed, all dictate specific prices providers must charge to score well in the competitive application process.