Monitoring, Enforcement Important as BEAD Gets Underway

As projects funded by the Commerce Department’s $42.45 billion broadband expansion program start to get underway, monitoring and oversight are going to be increasingly important, said broadband funding expert Carol Mattey. “I would be astonished if there weren’t defaults, just because every program has defaults,” said Mattey, head of Mattey Consulting and former deputy bureau chief at the Federal Communications Commission. She spoke about the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program on a Fiber Broadband Association webinar Wednesday. Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration has approved all state and territory spending plans under the program, except for California, Illinois, and Oklahoma, and states are beginning the process of signing grant agreements with winning internet service providers.