Walking Away from BEAD

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has released all but four states to begin signing Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment contracts with grant winners. NTIA has still not approved the grant proposals from California and Illinois. Now that the process of negotiating contracts for grant winners has started, news is seeping out of some grant winners backing out and refusing to accept the BEAD grant awards. The largest BEAD award being rejected is by Astound in Texas, which is walking away from $166 million in grants. The company explained this by saying that it had only won five of the thirty-three project areas it had applied for, and that the remote geographic areas of the awards made no sense without winning more awards. I have to wonder if the company’s pending merger with Google Fiber also played a role in the company walking away. While it isn’t official, I’ve heard through the grapevine that Astound is also going to walk away from $112 million of BEAD grants in Oregon. The company has also tentatively won $100 million in Washington.