Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program

On May 14, the Biden-Harris Administration hosted a Rural Communities in Action event at the White House to highlight how the Administration is investing in rural communities.

Eric Frederick, the Chief Connectivity Officer for the Michigan High-Speed Internet Office, is supremely confident. “I do believe it’s going to be enough,” he said when asked whether the $1.5 billion in Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding allotted to the state will be enough to get broadband to everyone. The healthy allocation leads Frederick to exclaim rather confidently that Michigan’s unserved and underserved will be largely connected with fiber.

If all goes well, the $42.5 billion in BEAD funding that Congress allotted in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act should be enough to extend broadband coverage across the country. But it will depend on how states and territories use the money. The first half of 2024 is a critical juncture as states solicit feedback and approval of their Initial Proposals from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which administers the BEAD program.

Rules for the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband funding program give individual states considerable leeway in how they define project areas—and broadband providers applying for funding should expect to see considerable variation from one state to the next. Depending on the state, providers may even be able to define their own project areas. There is considerable variation among states that are allowing providers to define their own project area. For example, Louisiana established clusters of Hex9s, which the state calls sub project areas (SPAs).

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited a recently completed Comcast rural broadband project in Stafford County, Virginia, highlighting that this is a public-private project between Comcast and the county. The giant cable company is involved in public-private partnerships across its national footprint. For years cable operators such as Comcast, Charter and Cox have fought hard against municipal broadband projects, always crying that it’s wrong for taxpayer dollars to compete against their private investments.

Rep Dusty Johnson (R-SD) introduced legislation to streamline the permitting process for broadband infrastructure projects. The Facilitating Optimal and Rapid Expansion and Siting of Telecommunications (FOREST) Act will cut down bureaucratic red tape to improve broadband access in rural America. The lengthy permitting process on federal lands has prevented the federal government from improving broadband access, even though billions of dollars are available to improve broadband deployment.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has said 2024 will be “the year of execution” for Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD). But the agency still has a ways to go in approving initial proposals for each state and territory. Louisiana was the first to get its plan approved in December.

In an era of increasing internet ubiquity, the ability to access and use online tools, services, and information is an essential aspect of everyday life. Many segments of society, however, remain underconnected and even excluded from the digital world. As technology evolves, the harms associated with the digital divide are compounding.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved the District of Columbia, Delaware and Washington state’s Initial Proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris Administration’s “Internet for All” initiative. This approval will enable the District of Columbia, Delaware and Washington to request access to funding and begin implementation of the BEAD program—a major step towards closing the digital divide and meeting the President’s goal of connecting everyone in America w

When the internet was new, people talked a lot about long-haul networks in the United States. That’s because a lot of the early data centers were on the East and West coasts, and they needed to be connected. These days long-haul networks are largely overshadowed by last mile builds. There’s a lot of existing long-haul and middle-mile fiber that can be patched together to create the desired routes for any business.