Louisiana today became the first state to have its BEAD final proposal approved by NTIA, the federal agency administering the rural broadband funding program. The approval means that Louisiana can begin spending BEAD funding allotted to the state to cover some of the costs of making high-speed broadband available to locations that don’t have service available today.
The state was allotted $1.355 billion in BEAD funding but won’t need all of it for deployments. On a phone call with Telecompetitor today, Veneeth Iyengar — executive director of Louisiana’s broadband office, known as ConnectLA — confirmed that the state will spend about $750 million on deployments and will have about $500 million left over for non-deployment purposes.
States are allowed to use leftover BEAD funding for certain purposes. For Louisiana, those purposes will include initiatives targeting education, workforce development, healthcare, agriculture, and economic development.
As Iyengar explained, Louisiana is using the term GUMBO 3.0 to encompass funding for the BEAD non-deployment initiatives.
Louisiana BEAD Final Proposal
The news about the Louisiana BEAD final proposal isn’t surprising, considering that Louisiana was the first state to receive NTIA approval of its BEAD Initial Proposal (Volumes 1 and 2) and was the first state to announce recommended funding awardees.
In November, ConnectLA announced 21 service providers that had been tentatively awarded funding.
In response to Telecompetitor’s inquiry today, Iyengar confirmed today that the awards recommended in November were all approved, except for one award to an unnamed satellite provider that the state hopes to finalize within a week or so.
NTIA guidelines issued earlier this month allow funding to go to satellite broadband providers only for extremely high-cost locations. And only low earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband providers are eligible for funding, not geostationary satellite providers.
The vast majority of Louisiana BEAD locations will be served by fiber broadband. Among the companies that will receive Louisiana BEAD funding for fiber or technologies other than satellite are AT&T, Brightspeed, Charter, Comcast, and Cox.
But by far the largest dollar award will go to Louisiana Local Fiber Consortium, which will receive more than $450 million. Cajun Broadband, Faster Cajun Networks, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, and other local entities also will receive funding.
Source: ConnectLA
Nearly 70% of Louisiana BEAD funding will go to Louisiana companies, according to Iyengar, and those companies will see $2 to $3 billion in new revenue as a result. About 140,000 locations will gain high-speed service, he said.
“Today marks a major milestone for the BEAD program, which puts states in the lead to deliver affordable, reliable high-speed Internet service to all,” said NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson in a prepared statement.
“Louisiana has an outstanding plan to close the digital divide. Today it can put that plan into action and start building the networks that will connect everyone in the state.”
