BEAD's Long Timeline a Product of Its Design: Institute for Progress
Congress' overly complicated BEAD design has undermined support, Institute for Progress Senior Fellow Sam Marullo wrote this week. Marullo pointed to states having seven distinct planning documents needing federal approval and BEAD's 57 mapping processes -- one for each state…
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and territory, plus a national one. However, BEAD "will be a clear success by 2030 -- unless changes disrupt the good work already underway," he said. Congress' approach -- no broadband deployment starts until all planning is done -- "makes sense on a flow chart, but it’s hard in the real world." A more agile BEAD might have started by immediately addressing known coverage gaps and refining maps as initial construction progressed, deploying more funding as better data revealed new gaps, he said.