Astound Explains $165 Million BEAD Refusal in Texas

Astound Broadband walked away from about $165 million in federal broadband funding in Texas. The company said it did so because only part of its application was approved. An Astound spokesperson said that the company had submitted 33 applications during the state’s Broadband Equity, Access , and Deployment program bidding. Those applications were for specific project areas but constituted a single contiguous fiber route that would be out of Astound’s existing footprint. Only five of those are approved, which would have left the company doing separate fiber builds far away from its existing footprint. That was “ultimately not financially feasible for the company,” the spokesperson wrote. “The five awarded counties were significantly remote from Astound's existing network, to where it became impossible to justify the expense or return on investment to build to these counties.”