State Broadband Officials See an Outsized BEAD Priority on LEO

Massachusetts Broadband Institute Director Michael Baldino also said fiber doesn't make sense for all his state's unserved and underserved locations, but BEAD’s focus on low-cost solutions and use of nationwide models to determine appropriate costs doesn’t accurately capture local conditions, he said. Make-ready costs are a huge unknown, and this type of modeling isn’t capturing such expenses as having to replace old poles, he noted. Massachusetts sometimes has to opt for a lower-cost connectivity solution over a more reliable and scalable technology. He added that 48% of the state's BEAD locations are going to LEO, with fiber and hybrid fiber-coax divvying up the rest.

Meghan Sandfoss, executive director of Kentucky's Office of Broadband Development, said the state's initial BEAD funding round early this year had about 85% of projects covered by fiber. Changes made for the "Benefit of the Bargain" version of BEAD, including a greater focus on price, led to fiber now taking about 68% and LEO claiming more than 20%, she said.

Also speaking at Thursday's event in Arlington, Virginia, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said that absent a greater policy focus on broadband affordability and digital literacy issues, BEAD could "build a lot of bridges to nowhere." Spending on deployment addresses “only one part of the picture.” She criticized the end of the affordable connectivity program, as well as the FCC's decision to terminate its programs for internet hot spots and Wi-Fi on school buses (see 2509300051).

In addition, Gomez said the Trump administration’s prioritization of U.S. leadership in AI -- without tackling issues like affordability, so communities can participate in the AI economy -- is “cognitive dissonance.” She also criticized the FCC's pause of its cyber trust mark program, arguing that concerns about participating companies’ possible ties to China (see 2506200059) were easily addressable.

Beyond BEAD

Massachusetts is starting discussions “about what a post-BEAD world looks like,” Baldino said, noting that there will be a need to address locations that are missing from the federal BEAD dataset. The state's history of investing in broadband connectivity should help in tackling those locations, he said.

Baldino said Massachusetts has roughly 2,600 BEAD-eligible locations, generally in scattered pockets. It has had discussions with NTIA about justifying the cost of some projects, he added, and the agency in some cases has requested that the state run a best-and-final-offer round that asks providers to lower costs.

Meanwhile, Vermont’s broadband map has 3,000 unserved or underserved locations that aren’t on the FCC’s map, so that will be the next challenge for the state, Hallquist said.

BEAD can’t “be a one-time deal,” Sandfoss argued, given the fact that the 100/20 Mbps speeds it aims for today won’t be adequate long term, and there are unserved areas that aren’t BEAD-eligible. “We’re not going to solve the problem all at once.”

Massachusetts had expected to see more provider interest in the Benefit of the Bargain BEAD application round than it had in the initial round, since the program's restructuring removed so many requirements, Baldino said. But that greater interest "didn't really materialize." He said giving all states the same deadlines disincentivized some providers from seeking BEAD projects in Massachusetts, as they were forced to dedicate their resources to applying in other states with more locations.

Sandfoss said Kentucky had hoped to provide connectivity to some community support organizations that often end up being used as staging areas for disaster recovery, such as state parks, but the restructured program's narrowed definition of community anchor institutions precluded that. Hallquist noted that Vermont is using state funding to get fiber connectivity to all its state parks by the end of 2026.