Co-ops Urge Course Correction in New BEAD Funding Round

The Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program’s initial investment is failing rural America. Delayed implementation, shifting guidance, cost constraints, and unrealistic funding assumptions have slowed progress, discouraged participation, and weakened a historic opportunity to bring long-overdue broadband service to rural communities. Directing further investment under the same misguided approach will not deliver universal connectivity to rural America. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration must allow flexibility for cost increases created by program delays, align funding levels with the actual cost of deploying broadband infrastructure in America’s hardest-to-reach communities, and remove fatally flawed pole attachment rules that clearly break from long-standing federal policy. Without correcting course, BEAD risks leaving rural America behind.