Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), enacted in November 2021, supplies funding for robust investment in American infrastructure projects.

The National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) released a Policy Notice providing guidance on the application of the Uniform Guidance in the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program. This Policy Notice reflects NTIA’s latest step to create the conditions necessary for building high-speed networks that connect everyone in America to affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service. The Uniform Guidance is the Federal Government’s framework for grants management, providing rules and requirements for Federal grant programs.

Fiber network deployments in the US, while hitting a bit of a slowdown, are proceeding apace and will ramp up significantly as grants start to roll out from the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program in 2025.

The third and fourth round of the Ohio Residential Broadband Expansion Grant (ORBEG) program will be implemented using the $793 million in federal Broadband, Equity and Deployment (BEAD) Program funds which were allocated to Ohio by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in June 2023. A prerequisite to executing the ORBEG-BEAD grant program is conducting the Ohio BEAD challenge process.

Over the last 18 months, there’s been a lot of discussion about whether National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) struck the right balance in urging states to extend fiber as far as possible when implementing the $40+ billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program. With all due respect to those who are passionate about their respective point of view—it’s time to step back and take a deep breath.

By passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS), and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the 117th Congress approved over a trillion dollars in immediate appropriations and nearly $600 billion more in authorizations to invest in infrastructure, clean energy, climate resilience, and industrial policy. Given the complex challenges that rural communities face to achieve and sustain prosperity, we examined the provisions of this legislation to identify where rural places are statutorily included or where funding objectives are exceptionally relevan

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.

We write in response to your testimony at the December 5, 2023, hearing held by the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology titled, “Oversight of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).” Throughout the hearing, you provided troubling answers that suggested that the NTIA would permit rate regulation by states participating in the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program.

There’s a lot of optimism in the broadband industry, driven by new opportunities in rural broadband, technology advances and more. In no particular order, here are 11 important developments that we saw this year.

A Top 10 list of elements that are novel or different in Louisiana's BEAD plan compared to what has been proposed in other state draft plans: