Starlink Gets Aggressive: Before-and-After BEAD Applicants in Tennessee

Tennessee became one of the first states to announce and publish the list of applicants for its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program Benefit of the Bargain funding round. As such, Tennessee becomes one of the first states for which we can compare the initial round of BEAD applications—before the new BEAD guidelines were issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration on June 6—with the application list for the Benefit of the Bargain round, which reflects the new guidelines. Some of the initial differences:

• Application number grows by 80 percent: Tennessee received 298 applications in its initial round and 541 in its Benefit of the Bargain round.
• Starlink gets aggressive: In the initial round of funding, Starlink did not apply for funding. In the Benefit of the Bargain round, Starlink applied to serve 164 project areas with low-Earth orbit satellite broadband.
• Amazon’s Project Kuiper requests less money: Amazon’s Project Kuiper applied to serve several project areas in the initial round in Tennessee. That’s still true, but now the company is seeking far less funding for the same project areas.