What States Need to Know About Federal BEAD Funding for High-Speed Internet Expansion

In November 2021, President Joe Biden (D) signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) into law. Among many other provisions, the law established the Broadband Equity, Adoption, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, the federal government’s most ambitious investment in high-speed, affordable internet to date. Congress established the BEAD Program to address the persistent digital divide in the United States and outlined three associated priorities for use of the funds: building infrastructure, developing broadband action plans, and supporting programs to promote user adoption of new networks. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) clarified in its June 2022 Notice of Funding Opportunity that BEAD spending should prioritize: “[F]iber connectivity directly to the end user;” “Unserved” locations—those without access to 25-megabit-per-second (Mbps) download service and 3-Mbps uploads, commonly expressed as 25/3-Mbps service; and “[P]roposals that improve affordability to ensure that networks built using taxpayer dollars are accessible to all Americans.

The NTIA is responsible for overseeing the distribution of funding to “eligible entities,” which are the 50 US states and all US territories, and it has established five minimum requirements for all BEAD-funded projects. They must:

• Deliver internet service that is not subject to data caps and has reliable speeds of at least 100/20 Mbps and low enough latency—the time it takes for data to travel to its destination and back along the network and which consumers experience as a delay, such as choppiness and buffering—to support real-time applications such as videoconferencing.
• Build and operate networks with average combined outages that do not exceed 48 hours a year (with exceptions for natural disasters).
• Provide broadband service to end users within four years of receipt of funds, carry out public awareness campaigns, and make connections available to any customer within the service area covered by the funding award.
• Develop cybersecurity and supply chain risk management plans to ensure that critical infrastructure is protected from threats such as hacking.
• Participate in the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides a $30-a-month discount to eligible households ($75 a month for households on Tribal lands), and offer at least one low-cost broadband service option.