Missouri Broadband Director on the Future of BEAD
BJ Tanksley has been the director of Missouri’s broadband office since 2022 and has lived and breathed rural broadband for even longer. Previously, Tanksley was director of state and local legislative affairs for the Missouri Farm Bureau, where he served on a committee that developed a proposal for a program that would cover some of the costs of deploying high-speed broadband in rural areas where it wasn’t available. Those efforts ultimately led to Missouri being one of the first states to establish a broadband funding program. The Missouri Office of Broadband Development, established in 2017, initially had a budget of $5 million for rural broadband. The broadband office is now getting set to award $1.7 billion in rural broadband funding through the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Tanksley is hopeful that Missouri will be able to reach all locations eligible for BEAD with the funding allotted to the state, including more than 90 percent that he estimates will be served with fiber broadband.
Missouri Broadband Director on the Future of BEAD