NTIA Announces BEAD Funding Awards

Today, NTIA announced that it has allocated funding to all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories (“Eligible Entities”) under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (“BEAD”) program.  As a reminder, the BEAD program has a total of $42.45 billion in funding, the largest portion of which is allocated to each Eligible Entity based upon its relative number of unserved locations, as reported in the FCC’s latest Broadband Data Map.  A location is considered “unserved” if it does not have access to internet service with minimum speeds of 25/3 Mbps.

Eligible Entities will receive their formal notices of allocation on June 30, 2023.  They will then have 180 days from the date of the formal notice to submit initial proposals outlining how they propose to distribute their funding allocation to subgrantees (i.e. internet service providers).  Eligible Entities can begin submitting their initial proposals on July 1, 2023.  NTIA will review Initial Proposals on a rolling basis.  Once an Eligible Entity’s proposal is approved, the Eligible Entity will be permitted to request access to at least 20% of their allocated funds, which they may use to fund broadband deployment projects that: (1) consist of at least 80% unserved locations; and (2) are in locations where the percentage of households at or below 150% of the poverty line is higher than the national average.

One year after the initial proposal is approved, Eligible Entities will be required to submit a final proposal, explaining how it has complied with the process set forth in its initial proposal and the results.  NTIA will review final proposals on a rolling basis and will release the remainder of an Eligible Entity’s funding upon approval of the final proposal.

The amounts awarded to each Eligible Entity are as follows:

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