Will BEAD Encounter Bottlenecks?

Will a big flurry of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants encounter any big bottlenecks that will slow down the implementation of grant construction? My response is yes, but maybe not the bottlenecks most people expect. I expect some of the following:

• Engineering and Design: BEAD means a lot of miles of fiber to design in 2025 into 2026. I’m guessing this could easily result in a 50% increase in demand for the folks who design networks.
• Environmental Studies: Many BEAD studies will require environmental studies. This is something that is not done for most other fiber construction. I predict a bottleneck for environmental scientists, particularly when BEAD project first get started in 2025 and 2026.
• Locators: I expect there will be more aerial than buried fiber built with BEAD, but there will still be a substantial need for buried locators. The shortage is mostly going to come from construction in rural counties that don’t have the resources available to handle a big increase in workload.
• Permitting and Rights-of-ways: Local governments will be asked to issue a huge number of permits for construction. The problem is going to be similar to the bottleneck with locators in that a lot of this construction will be in rural counties that often have little or no staff.
• Fiber Contractors: I believe all BEAD projects will find a construction contractor. The delays will come from contractors trying to keep technicians. The Powers and Communications Contractors Association (PCCA) recently warned the industry that there is a current shortage of 28,000 experienced construction technicians.

I do not expect most of these delays to be crippling, and we won’t be returning to the delays we saw during the pandemic when projects shut down for lack of critical staff or materials. But delays will slow construction at times, and that means extra cost for anybody building a network.