The most recent tallies for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program estimated that there are around 6.4 million unserved homes to be covered by the program. Hypothetically, let’s consider that we use Starlink for 6.4 million installations. What should that cost?
The state of Texas has awarded Lyte Fiber LLC $57.8 million to provide broadband to 6,750 unserved and underserved homes and businesses in Marion and Navarro counties. The Navarro County grant—which represents $43.3 million of the total—was a recent award. The awards were made by the state’s Bringing Online Opportunities to Texas II Program, which is overseen by the Comptroller’s Broadband Development Office.
The middle mile has been a problem for rural broadband service providers since early DSL services in the 1990s. Even today, the distance between a rural BSP’s service area to the nearest connection to the core network could be hundreds of miles.
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