BEAD enters 'cleanup phase' as NTIA prepares supplemental round for missed locations
With all 50 states' BEAD plans approved, NTIA is preparing a supplemental funding round for locations the original process missed — a process broadband expert Carol Mattey estimates could take nine months.
Billions of dollars in federal broadband funding are moving from planning to construction, but some homes and businesses could still be left without a connection — and a new “cleanup” round of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program aims to fill the remaining gaps.
The approval of all 50 states’ BEAD plans marks the end of the programme’s planning phase, Broadband Breakfast reported from Washington on September 30. Broadband policy expert Carol Mattey, a former deputy chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau, said the next major step will be a supplemental round of BEAD funding announced by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
“The planning phase is officially over, and we are moving into the actual execution phase,” Mattey said during a September 30 Fiber Broadband Association webinar.
The supplemental process is designed to identify locations missed by the original BEAD process. NTIA will issue a new list of eligible locations, after which states will have 30 days to validate the list. Providers will then be able to challenge locations they believe are already served or covered by an enforceable commitment. There will be no rebuttal round, Mattey said, and states will have another 30 days to adjudicate the challenges before sending final lists to NTIA.
NTIA will use the approved location counts to determine how much supplemental funding each state receives. States will then conduct another procurement round before submitting supplemental proposals to NTIA. Mattey estimated the entire process could take about nine months, though the timing of NTIA’s reviews remains uncertain.
The supplemental funding comes with a potentially significant constraint, she warned: NTIA will base each state’s funding cap on the average cost per location approved in its original BEAD proposal multiplied by the number of additional unserved locations. Because construction costs have risen since the original plans — and because lower-cost satellite projects were included in the original averages — the remaining locations, which may be among the most difficult and expensive to serve, could face a funding squeeze.
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