Montana's Five-Year Plan for BEAD Funding

While we recently broke down Montana's Draft Digital Opportunity Plan and the state's vision of digital equity, the Montana Broadband Office (MBO) has also made public its draft Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program Five-Year Action Plan. Ultimately, the MBO’s vision is to narrow the digital divide in support of Montana’s economic, workforce, health, and educational goals by ensuring reliable, affordable internet access for everyone in the state. According to Montana's draft plan, 82 percent of Montanans are currently served by broadband networks with speeds of at least 100/20 Mbps, while 5 percent are underserved and 13 percent are unserved. Montana’s unserved and underserved locations are spread out across several counties, but a higher percentage of rural locations are unserved and underserved. Rural Montana is 16 percent unserved and 6 percent underserved while metropolitan Montana is 9 percent unserved and 3 percent underserved. Though rural areas have the highest number of unserved and underserved locations, there are also large concentrations of unserved and underserved locations in a few of Montana’s largest counties that have a high percentage of served locations.