- BEAD awards will be given for 270,571 California locations
- 52.9% will go to fiber technologies, 27% for LEO satellite, and 20.1% for fixed wireless access
- The final proposal now approved by NTIA awards $1.42 billion to connect BEAD eligible locations
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has finally approved California's Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) final proposal, which was originally submitted in December 2025.
This leaves only Illinois as the last state awaiting approval of its BEAD final proposal.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which manages BEAD for the state said, “This milestone represents months of work by CPUC and our federal partners since the submission of the final proposal. The outcome of this careful work ensures the Benefit of the Bargain goals were met by delivering the greatest value for California's $1.86 billion broadband investment through a competitive, technology-neutral process.”
CPUC is working on a resolution outlining the revisions made to the final proposal compared to what it submitted at the end of 2025. The revisions will be published for public comment and may be considered by CPUC as soon as its September 17, 2026, voting meeting.
Fierce Network has reached out to CPUC to find out when BEAD awards might start flowing in the state, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.
According to NTIA’s BEAD website, BEAD awards will be given for 270,571 California locations, with 52.9% going to fiber technologies, 27% for low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite, and 20.1% for fixed wireless access (FWA).
California’s final proposal submitted in December proposed giving BEAD awards to 176,542 unserved and 162,022 underserved eligible locations for a total of 338,564 locations.
The proposal submitted in December would award $1.58 billion and the final proposal now approved by NTIA awards $1.42 billion.
During a Congressional hearing in June, NTIA chief Arielle Roth was grilled about the slow progress of BEAD. Just two states — Nebraska and Louisiana — had thus far connected citizens using BEAD money. And the locations those two states had connected were via FWA.
Roth took heat during the hearing from California representatives who pressed her on when the state would finally have its BEAD proposal approved.
California Congressman Scott Peters noted that after several rounds of proposal curing this spring, “NTIA recently sent California a completely new round of curing requests, with new issues and questions NTIA had never previously raised.” Roth pointed to issues around mapping anomalies and argued it’s NTIA’s duty to protect taxpayer dollars.
Other stories about BEAD
NTIA chief says 2 states have deployed BEAD dollars – but not for fiber
Satellite operators might not take such a big slice of BEAD after all
AT&T takes multi-prong approach to get out of California landline phone business