Wyoming Broadband Manager Doesn’t Expect to Fund Much Fiber

Elaina Zempel, manager of the Wyoming broadband office, laments that the office didn’t have more funds to distribute in its recent Capital Projects Fund (CPF) program, which awarded funding to network operators to cover some of the costs of deploying broadband to 15,000 unserved and underserved locations. Fortunately, NTIA allocated $347.9 million in rural broadband funding to Wyoming for the BEAD rural broadband funding program, so there is still an opportunity to fund many of the failed requests from Wyoming’s CPF round of funding. The CPF allocations were for fiber projects, but Zempel expects the BEAD funding to skew more toward less costly technologies. Industry experts estimate that Wyoming will be one of the states that will deploy the least per-capita fiber in the BEAD program. According to Zempel, the state’s BEAD allocation is roughly a third of what would be required to get fiber to everyone. “We are grateful for the investment but there isn’t enough money to deliver the program’s stated goal of broadband for all” with fiber, Zempel said.