The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) doesn’t appear to have made major changes to states’ award recommendations in the Benefit of the Bargain round in the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program — at least not based on Telecompetitor’s analysis of NTIA award approvals for several states.
Telecompetitor reached out to states that were furthest along in the BEAD process as of March 16. At that time, 20 states had received approval on their BEAD final proposals from NTIA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and had signed an award agreement, according to NTIA’s BEAD Progress Dashboard.
Nine of the states responded to our request for a list of awardees that had received federal approval. Our analysis of the results from those states follows.
Two of the frontrunner states — Louisiana and Maine — shared NTIA-approved awards lists several months ago. NTIA made relatively small changes to the award recommendations that the two states submitted in the Benefit of the Bargain round.
At that time, all states other than Louisiana were still awaiting NIST approval. Since then, an NTIA spokesperson told Telecompetitor that NIST is not making any changes to awardee lists that have been approved by NTIA. In other words, once NTIA has approved a state’s award recommendations, the federal approval process for those awards is complete.
Almost all 50 states have now received NTIA approval on their final BEAD proposals. The NTIA-approved final proposals include the award recommendations and reflect any changes made by NTIA to what the states recommended.
Getting hold of award lists, as approved by NTIA, is no small feat, however. Some states declined to share those lists with Telecompetitor until the states have signed contracts with all awardees. Others did not respond to our inquiry.
Meanwhile, the NTIA spokesperson said that “while we are trying to get the final NTIA approved plans for each state/territory up on our website, it’s a big lift.”
The spokesperson noted that “we must work with all 56 states and territories to clean up their proposals to be sure we are only sharing information allowable for public consumption.”
The review process
The NTIA spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request from Telecompetitor about why the agency increased some awards and reduced others.
According to news reports that have been confirmed by parties involved, however, the agency established funding thresholds for the states after some states had submitted their award recommendations. If a proposed award amount exceeded a certain threshold, the state was required to solicit best and final offers from awardees involved.
A spokesperson for the Nebraska Broadband Office offered a bit more detail in an email in response to an inquiry from Telecompetitor.
“During NTIA’s review, NBO received guidance around limits of funding per location,” the spokesperson said.
“As a result of this guidance, applicants were allowed to revise their applications. In certain instances, providers chose to withdraw their applications that could not be supported within the federal cost guidelines, and the Nebraska Broadband Office negotiated with other providers that applied for those locations to ensure coverage.
“These adjustments account for the differences between the State’s recommended awards in September and the amounts ultimately approved by NTIA reflected in the December version of the Final Proposal.”
Telecompetitor’s analysis
This process also may have caused funding to shift away from fiber broadband providers toward fixed wireless or low Earth orbit satellite providers in some states. In Nebraska, for example, Telecompetitor’s analysis found that Nextlink was recommended for additional funding — and the state’s awards list shows the company using fixed wireless for all locations. Additionally, LEO satellite providers Amazon Kuiper (now Amazon Leo) and SpaceX saw funding increase in several states.
Surprisingly, SpaceX saw its funding decrease in two states studied: Arizona and Montana. Amazon also saw funding decrease in Montana. Neither state responded to Telecompetitor’s request for comment about this in time for our deadline, nor did either company or NTIA.
It’s worth noting that the frontrunner states may be further along in the award process because they had fewer awards in question than other states. Potentially, bigger changes will come to light moving forward.
It’s also worth noting that some states made an initial set of BEAD award recommendations prior to the Benefit of the Bargain round. Any states that had done so were required to conduct a new awards process based on new rules established by NTIA in June 2025. In some cases, the revised awards were considerably different from what the state originally recommended.
Following is Telecompetitor’s complete analysis, which compares the final awards lists from the nine states with what each state submitted to NTIA in the Benefit of the Bargain round.
Thanks again to Telecompetitor’s Ian Doescher for his work in compiling the state award recommendations in the Benefit of the Bargain round.
Download a PDF of these results here.
