What if Nobody Shows up for BEAD?

Charter CFO Jessica Fisher recently announced that Charter will spend substantially less on pursuing Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants than the company spent on Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) [funny wording for how a company wins federal money]. This is big news because a natural assumption in some state broadband offices is that Charter would likely be a big player in the BEAD grant process. Charter has been a major participant in pursuing and winning State broadband grants funded by the American Rescue Plan Act and the Capital Projects Fund. The real concern for State Broadband Offices is that Charter might not be the only large internet service provider (ISP) thinking of ignoring BEAD. Most states are counting on large ISPs like Charter, Comcast, Frontier, Windstream, and Brightspeed to pursue BEAD. After anticipating the matching fund requirement, the total awards for BEAD projects will be more than $50 billion. If the big companies don’t participate, there may not be enough financial capacity in the rest of the industry to take on the matching requirements for winning BEAD grants.