Will Cellular Companies Pursue BEAD Grants?

Several people have asked me recently if cellular companies will be pursuing Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants. Until recently, cellular companies didn’t have a product that would have qualified for broadband grants. BEAD and other grants are awarded to internet service providers (ISP) that serve homes and businesses, not cell phones. But the introduction of the fixed wireless access (FWA) product line has created a broadband product that might qualify for grants. Cellular companies must convince state grant offices that they can deliver broadband speeds greater than 100/20 Mbps. Another issue to consider is that cellular carriers are currently providing priority to cell phones over FWA customers. If the network gets busy, cell phone customers get the requested broadband, and FWA customers get throttled. Yet another issue is the ability of a grant winner to serve everybody in the footprint. Unless a grant area has extremely low density, it’s likely that the cell site doesn’t have the capacity to give everybody unlimited home broadband. Another interesting issue to consider is how mapping plays into this. I’ve heard a lot of comments from folks who are claiming that T-Mobile and Verizon are already claiming fast speeds in a lot of places. Folks are saying the coverage areas claimed in the FCC maps seem a lot larger than the reality. Claiming high speeds and coverage areas that are larger than reality are counterproductive to seeking grants. Will broadband offices not award grants in places the cellular companies claim to already offer fast broadband? The emergence of the FWA technology is so new that I suspect most state broadband offices haven’t come to grips with that question.