100,000 West Virginians will miss out on broadband upgrades under new BEAD Plan

Gov Patrick Morrisey (R-WV) announced that the state had finalized its $1.2 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Plan to bring high-speed broadband to homes and businesses in the state. But buried in the fine print, tens of thousands of West Virginians will be left out. The plan now leaves out roughly 40,000 households or about 100,000 residents, based on the state’s average household size. These households rely on fixed wireless, a type of internet delivered by signals from cell towers or local antennas. Earlier in 2025, federal officials reclassified these homes as already “served” if providers say they could deliver minimum broadband speeds. That shift slashed the number of West Virginia households eligible for the BEAD Program by more than a third. Instead of roughly 114,000 unserved households qualifying, the state now counts just 74,000. For families, the reclassification doesn’t mean better service, only that slower, less reliable connections are being treated as good enough in a state where mountains and hollows already challenge wireless signals.