One Million Locations Might Remain Unserved Post-BEAD. Leftover Funds Should be Used to Connect Them.

Despite its aim of universal service – or as close to universal service as possible – it appears unavoidable that some locations will remain unserved after BEAD. Whether BEAD is deemed successful or not will hinge on the number of these locations. If there are 1 million unserved–or even 100,000–post-BEAD, then BEAD will not have achieved the mission that everyone understood it to have: pushing broadband to as many people as possible and finally achieving universal or near-universal availability. If this occurs, the country will once again return to the cycle of subsidy programs failing to achieve their goals, thus necessitating another grant program to make up for the shortcomings of the ones that came before. A better approach would be to hold a second round of BEAD. Ending BEAD with leftover funds and hundreds of thousands of unserved locations would mean NTIA did not accomplish its mission to meet the objective of Congress when it created and funded the program. Fortunately, it is not too late for NTIA to begin making plans to finish the job and make sure every American has access to a robust broadband connection.