States feel pressured to hurry up with new BEAD rules

States have been chugging away at revising their Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment proposals for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, but the time crunch is gnawing away at broadband office resources. Meghan Sandfoss, Kentucky’s executive director of broadband development, said that the BEAD program’s “curing” process, where NTIA reviews the state plans and requests changes, has a “very aggressive” timeline. “Sometimes it’s like less than 12 hours that we have to resubmit something,” she said. “Sometimes [it’s] a couple of days. Sometimes that’s achievable, sometimes it’s not.” NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth confirmed that the agency is asking states and providers to lower costs for certain BEAD projects by submitting their “best and final offer,” throwing another wrench in the BEAD timeline. “One thing we need to recognize as we’re talking about these deadlines is we don’t do this alone in a silo,” said Minnesota broadband chief Bree Maki. “We need information from our partners,” meaning the internet service providers, so “the timelines are tight all around.”