Co-ops Ask NTIA for BEAD Eligibility Flexibility

In a letter to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) expressed concerns about the Federal Communications Commission's new National Broadband Map and urged the NTIA to provide states with flexibility in determining locations and areas eligible for funding in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. It is imperative that NTIA does not hamstring states and territories by mandating they use the FCC broadband maps as the sole source for identifying eligible funding locations as unserved or underserved in their Initial Proposals, their challenge processes, and the scope of deployment projects proposed in subgrant applications. States should be given as much flexibility as allowed under the statute to use their own data, local knowledge, and a robust challenge process to ensure that the most accurate information is used to allocate vital BEAD funds. Failure to provide states with adequate flexibility to target funding where they know it is needed would squander this once-in-a-generation opportunity to bridge the digital divide.