A new analysis from The Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School compares the existing footprints of internet service providers to their proposed expansions as part of the $42.25 Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program infrastructure project.
It found that several small providers are poised to receive tens of millions in public funding for expansions that are bigger than their existing footprints.
Providers attempting to more than double their networks may have a harder time managing the projects, according to Alex Karras and Michael Santorelli, who authored the report. They cited providers who were forced to withdraw from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) project as an example of what could go wrong.
First, however, the new ACLP analysis listed providers whose BEAD buildouts would increase their footprints by less than 1%. They included major telecom providers like Comcast’s Xfinity, AT&T, Charter’s Spectrum, and Frontier. Comcast is slated to receive nearly $1.7 billion in public funds, while AT&T is to receive more than $1 billion.
The ACLP BEAD analysis showed that Starlink is one of the companies with plans to expand by less than 1%, with plans to bring connectivity to 478,882 locations. That’s only about 56,000 fewer than Xfinity and AT&T combined, but Starlink is receiving about $669 million to get the job done.
The satellite connections seem like a much better deal for taxpayers, but Starlink has asked the states for special exceptions to BEAD rules and may end up withdrawing from the program.
That could add to the 1.1 million locations that may still lack broadband access after BEAD, as predicted by an earlier ACLP report. The number of unserved locations could continue to expand if other providers can’t live up to the promises they made when they applied for BEAD funding.
Broadband Expanded didn’t point any fingers, but listed providers by their expansion ratio. Each of the following providers is set to more than double its footprint and is slated to receive more than $100 million.
- Shawnee Telephone Company
- Wecom Fiber
- ZiTEL
- IBT Connect
- Inland Cellular LLC
- Pend Oreille PUD
- Lyte Fiber, LLC
- Maverix Broadband
- Trace Fiber Networks
- NEK Broadband
The BEAD analysis also listed providers who couldn’t be matched to any locations in broadband maps managed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In some cases, as with Amazon Kuiper, that’s because the providers have no existing customers. Other instances may have been due to data errors, analysts said.
