How can we make the broadband funding go as far as possible?

How can we make the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding go as far as possible? The answer is that state grant plans need to be laser focused on how to generate competition and keep costs as low as possible. If we can do that, we stretch the BEAD dollars as far as possible. If we don’t, we run out of money. It’s really quite easy to construct this framework. We only need two pieces of data: the number of unserved and underserved locations, and what we pay to reach them. According to the latest Federal Communications Commission maps, there are 8.5 million Unserved locations and 3.6 million Underserved locations—a total of 12.1 million locations. The BEAD program doesn’t need to fund all of these locations. The FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program already has commitments to fund new broadband buildout in 2.35 million locations that are currently Unserved or Underserved. Large grants are available through the Department of Treasury that will also build out new broadband. The Treasury American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grants could fund as many as 2.7 million locations, though it’s not clear whether they are all Unserved locations, so I won’t subtract them from BEAD’s obligation. We’ve established that we aren’t going to fund locations above $20,000 per location. There’s one more adjustment to make: private capital is expected to fund part of these projects. In our hypothetical State of America that was allocated $42.45 billion, we only need $29 billion to reach these locations, if the program is executed in an highly efficient way.