BEAD Awards and Satellite

North Carolina recently announced its preliminary awards for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program. The State has allocated $408.5 million for preliminary BEAD awards out of an allocation of $1.5 billion. That leaves an astounding $1.1 billion on the table and likely unspent. There is some hope that the unspent money, referred to as non-deployment funds, will be at least partially available to the State for broadband-related activities. But that possibility seems to be dwindling every day. Now that the funding for satellite has sunk in, I’m starting to see what this means for Western North Carolina. First, there are five counties where satellite was awarded to all of the eligible BEAD locations—Clay, Madison, Mitchell, Polk, and Yancey. What do County officials in those counties tell people? NTIA is giving money mostly to Kuiper and some to Starlink to be able to offer them satellite broadband. All of the BEAD-eligible locations in these counties can already buy satellite broadband from Starlink. The only benefit of BEAD for these residents is that they will probably get a free receiver for enrolling as a BEAD customer. Any hope these counties had of filling in the map with fiber is now gone.