Reaching Everybody with BEAD

One of the most interesting rules in the BEAD Program is that broadband needs to be offered to every unserved location in the country—not 98 percent, not 99 percent, but all of them. This sounds like a terrific policy goal, but as I’ve been thinking about it, the goal is going to be incredibly hard to meet in many places. There are homes throughout the West that are far away from everybody else and will be extremely expensive to reach. There might be even more such homes in Alaska. One of the questions not being asked by the people who created the 100 percent coverage requirement is if folks who purposefully built far away from everybody even want a broadband connection. Imagine getting a grant for these locations and the residents don’t want the broadband. Any BEAD winner is going to have to pledge to build to reach every unserved home in a grant footprint. But nobody has defined the consequences if a BEAD winner doesn’t reach everybody. Will states mandate that a provider make the investment to get to the hard-to-reach homes? Will States consider a clawback of funding or big fines for providers that fail to reach everybody?