On Friday, the Colorado broadband office offered an update on Round 2 of their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program grants applicant activity. The office closed the second application window through its Advance Colorado Broadband grant program at the end of February.
During the second round, the office received 96 applications from 22 companies for a proposed $825 million total investment, including $649 million in requested funding and $176 million in matching funds.
The applications included 67 “Priority Broadband Project Applications” — those that would use fiber technology — and 29 “Other Last-Mile Broadband Project Applications” that would use technology other than fiber, such as fixed wireless or satellite.
Applications propose to service 94,080 of the 104,269 locations that were eligible in Round 2, including:
- 60,165 unserved locations
- 33,915 underserved locations
The counties with the highest number of applications are Larimer (11), Weld (9), Douglas (8), and Arapahoe (8). A total of 53 counties had more than one BEAD application, with every county in Colorado having at least one.
The following is a breakdown of the Colorado Round 2 BEAD applications:
- 76% from non-ILEC entities
- 6% from municipalities or local governments
- 5% from public or private utilities
- 4% from ILEC service providers
- 1% from Tribal governments
- 7% from other entity types
The next stage of the Colorado BEAD application process starts soon. Over the next few weeks, the CBO will review applications. The office will communicate decisions directly with preliminarily selected applicants and then submit selected awards from Round 1 and Round 2 to the NTIA in the CBO BEAD Final Proposal. The office will publicly announce BEAD award winners this summer.
Applicants wishing to know more about the Colorado BEAD application selection process should refer to CBO’s approved BEAD Initial Proposal Volume 2 (Section 2.4, starting on page 41).
Additional information about broadband in Colorado, including links to state funding resources, BEAD news, awards made, state-specific Telecompetitor coverage and more, can be found on the Broadband Nation webpage for the state.
