The new guidance from the NTIA concerning the BEAD program (BEAD 2.0) has states scrambling to revise and resubmit their proposals for the $42.45 billion in funding by Sept. 3, 2025. Several studies have been released that estimate how much the new rules, which emphasize low bidders and deemphasize fiber, will reduce the number of locations that qualify for BEAD funding.
The number of BEAD-eligible locations has decreased since funding was allocated by Congress for rural broadband expansion through continued buildout funded by the American Rescue Plan Act, Connect America Fund and the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. Allowing existing unlicensed fixed wireless (ULFW) coverage to be figured into the BEAD calculus will further decrease the number of BEAD locations, according to the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) at the New York Law School.
Through its analysis, the ACLP estimates that the BEAD Challenge Process reduced the number of eligible BEAD locations by 59 percent since 2023.
“This analysis … shows dramatic decreases in unserved and underserved locations compared to counts from the latest FCC data, and, crucially, to counts at the time BEAD funding was allocated,” the group wrote on its website titled Broadband Expanded.
The addition to ULFW technology as eligible for inclusion in BEAD maps could reduce the remaining unserved locations by an additional 15 percent. That number drops to 13 percent, with the addition of new BEAD-eligible locations from RDOF defaults.
“Taken together, these data mean that the total number of BEAD-eligible locations in the U.S. will have decreased by upwards of 65 percent since June 2023 (assuming that all ULFW connections are deemed sufficient and the locations they served are classified as ineligible for BEAD),” the ACLP wrote.
A study by the Systems, People, Infrastructure and Networks Lab at Virginia Tech (SPIN@VT) found that allowing ULFW will make an additional 842,000 broadband-serviceable locations count as “served.” This represents a 12-percent decrease in the number of unserved/underserved locations nationwide, with 10 states reducing their number of unserved/underserved locations by more than 25 percent, according to their study.
“The impact [of BEAD 2.0] will vary based on the version of the National Broadband Map that the states use,” according to SPIN@VT. “At the low end, if we assume all states perform a ‘true up’ to the latest National Broadband Map release, approximately 824,000 BSLs are no longer eligible for any BEAD funding. On the other hand, if all states stick with data in the map version used for their original challenge process, more than 1.1 million locations become ineligible for funding.”
The category ULFW covers a wide range of technologies from old 802.11-based radios in the congested 2.4 GHz band to the new massive MIMO and beamforming antennas. The disparate age of the radios and spectrum the use can also impact if they meet the standards set for BEAD funding, according to SPIN@VT.
Supporters of rural broadband worry that reports like the ones by ACLP and SPIN@VT will skew the government’s thinking and lead to excessive cuts in BEAD funding. They maintain that FCC’s broadband coverage maps are inaccurate and cannot be trusted to show a realistic picture of the unserved and underserved areas without an additional challenge period or other independent data on rural broadband experiences.
