Charter CEO: BEAD Funding Will Be ‘Trickier Than We Were Hoping For’

Winning funding in the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband program will be “trickier than we were hoping for,” said Charter CEO Chris Winfrey. “We didn’t get all the guidelines and [National Telecommunications and Information Administration] instructions that we were hoping for,” Winfrey said. Instead, some of the guidelines that have been established are “unhelpful to private capital.” Although Winfrey didn’t elaborate, this may have been a reference to rules that favor public/private partnerships.