With BEAD deployment plans largely submitted, fiber continues to lead the field, capturing about 2.2 million broadband serviceable locations (BSLs), or roughly 64% of the total, according to recent BEAD analyses. The BEAD program covers roughly $41.6 billion in federal funding, with proposals so far representing about $18 billion. Low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites have won at least 770,000 BSLs (22%), terrestrial wireless about 340,000 (10%), and hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) roughly 35,000 (1%). California still has a November 21 deadline to detail its BEAD allocations.
Nationally, per-premise costs cluster around $5,000 for fiber deployments, with some states seeing closer to $7,000 per location in certain territories. Comcast leads BEAD funding totals (roughly $800 million by mid-September), followed by AT&T (about $600 million). Premises served tallies favor SpaceX, with Kuiper close behind; SpaceX’s higher per-BSL charges reflect its operating model, while Kuiper’s scale remains below its proposal counts (roughly 300,000 BSLs).
NTIA defines a BEAD-eligible BSL as a residential or business structure that can receive fixed broadband, with BEAD eligibility tiered on the FCC map. The rules around CAIs (community anchor institutions) and ELBs (enterprise-level businesses) create definitional ambiguities in state submissions, and Oklahoma, among others, has yet to finalize whether certain premises count as BSLs, CAIs, or ELBs as of late October.
Observers note that HFC shares appear understated, even though Comcast remains the single largest fund winner in the current reviews. In practice, most HFC activity is concentrated in a handful of states—Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia—raising questions about the fiber-to-the-premises dominance in BEAD totals across the country.
The BEAD bargain remains uncertain: about $21 billion in BEAD funds were unallocated at the time of writing, with California’s plan potentially altering the national pool once finalized. Analysts caution that federal budget actions and possible recissions could affect BEAD funding, underscoring the need for loan guarantees or other tools to keep deployers financed. As the program enters its next phase, some propose focusing on flexible financing measures to counter construction delays and spectrum constraints, while looking ahead to a decade of BEAD deployment.
