- Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said a new BEAD funding notice is coming soon
- States will likely have to redo their grant proposals from scratch
- BEAD money probably won’t flow until 2026 or later, said New Street’s Blair Levin
The wait for new BEAD rules may soon be over — and that doesn't bode well for the fiber industry and state broadband plans.
In a Senate hearing this week, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick indicated that a new or revised notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for the program is coming “shortly” and that he expects to get the $42 billion BEAD money out the door by year-end 2025.
This means states will have to resubmit their applications, and they will have 90 days to comment on the NOFO, Lutnick said. He assured BEAD plans will be approved as long as they are “technologically agnostic” and will provide broadband “at the cheapest price per user.”
In other words, we can probably expect less money for fiber and more for fixed wireless access (FWA) and low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite. States will likely have to redo their BEAD bidding processes, said New Street Research Policy Analyst Blair Levin, meaning it’s unlikely the money will start flowing this year.
BEAD deployments delayed until 2026 or later
The NOFO process will run until about the end of 2025, he wrote in a note to investors, with state grant programs taking another 6-12 months to pan out.
Levin expects most states won’t have their rebidding processes done “until late in 2026, and given the potential for litigation, it could be even later.”
Gigi Sohn, executive director of the American Association of Public Broadband (AAPB), similarly said it’s unrealistic for NTIA to disburse BEAD funds by the end of the year, given how much time states will need to rewrite and redo their proposals and then wait for NTIA’s approval.
“We should also expect that requirements for affordable service, labor requirements and climate resiliency will be either eliminated or weakened,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
The prospect of waiting until 2026 or beyond spells out bad news for the folks who have already spent time and money on the BEAD application process.
“When you have money saved for a 25% or 50% match you can only hold that money so long,” said James King, solutions engineer at Millennium, at Fiber Connect this week.
Even with all the private capital flowing through the fiber market, King noted that money “isn’t going to fill the void of BEAD.”
What new BEAD rules mean for Starlink and wireless
No surprise, a further BEAD delay is good news for Elon Musk’s Starlink, Levin said, as the company will have time to sign up rural customers “who have no other options or prospects for options in the near term.”
Starlink has already made strides to grab more share in the home broadband market. It launched this year a cheaper residential plan (but with slower speeds) and now offers free gear to new customers in areas where it has excess capacity.
David Zumwalt, president and CEO at WISPA, understandably welcomed the prospect of a technology-neutral BEAD program. He said it’s not about “picking technology winners or losers” but rather, helping ISPs offset increased operating expenses in rural areas.
“BEAD grants are devoted almost exclusively to CapEx, not OpEx. Therefore, ISPs that receive BEAD funds to build out very expensive infrastructure will have to find a way to afford the ongoing annual OpEx on their own,” Zumwalt said.