How Much BEAD Funding Will Remain After “Benefit of the Bargain”? Potentially Billions.

The current total of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program-eligible locations is far lower than when the National Telecommunications and Information Administration first calculated BEAD funding allocations back in June 2023. While exact eligible locations lists are still subject to change as state broadband offices scramble to incorporate the “benefit of the bargain round," the number of eligible locations is lower—and in many cases, significantly so—than when BEAD funds were divvied up. This dramatic decrease in eligible locations will likely manifest in leftover deployment funds. Indeed, states will have the same amount of BEAD funding available to them, but fewer locations that need to be served. With overall BEAD-eligible locations plummeting by at least 59 percent and perhaps as much as 65 percent nationally, states could now theoretically have an average of more than twice as much funding per remaining BEAD-eligible location.