Texas has received approval its Final Proposal for federal funding through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program.
Texas’ Benefit of the Bargain funding round saved $2 billion compared to allocations by the Biden administration, according to a press release from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) about the Texas proposal. The original funding had been $3.31 billion, but was finalized at $1.26 billion. This is about $5 billion less than the $6.4 billion BEAD applicants requested as of August of 2025.
Builders will also contribute a match of nearly $600 million, according to information published by the NTIA.
The savings came in two ways. First, the number of eligible locations changed between the original funding allocation and the final award proposal. Second, the NTIA changed the BEAD guidelines in June to require a technology-neutral approach, meaning many locations will be served by satellite internet or fixed wireless internet instead of fiber.
Even without the rules that gave fiber a leg up, more than half of BEAD locations that received funding in Texas will get fiber. The breakdown for all 242,903 funded locations is as follows:
- Fiber: 50.6%
- Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite: 27.1%
- Fixed wireless: 22.3
The Final Proposal approved today has an average per-location cost of $5,178 in federal funding, with providers spending the remaining $2,450. The state of Texas also plans to kick in up to half the funding for the federal match after it determined that the 25% match was too restrictive, according to the Final BEAD Proposal it sent to the NTIA in October.
The BEAD funding leaves about 2,000 eligible unserved and underserved locations in Texas unfunded.
The announcement of final awards for Texas comes after 15 other states and three territories had their BEAD proposals approved earlier this week.
Additional information about Texas broadband, including state funding resources, BEAD news, awards made, state-specific coverage, and more may be found on the Telecompetitor Broadband Nation webpage for the state.
