About 1 Million BEAD-Eligible Locations Remain, Researchers Say
Tentative NTIA estimates appear to target about half those locations
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2026 – There are likely about 1 million eligible locations remaining as the Commerce Department plans another round of its broadband expansion program, according to a new analysis of broadband coverage data.
But it’s not clear the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is still targeting all the locations that would be eligible under the program’s normal rules.
Last week NTIA announced a new funding round under its $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. The program’s main bidding finished last year, and NTIA has approved states to collectively spend $18.2 billion deploying broadband to about 3.79 million locations.
The new round was intended to identify and secure coverage for homes and businesses that were set to receive service through other grant programs before a provider defaulted, or that were misclassified by previous federal broadband maps. From refining maps to getting new grants approved, NTIA's notice said the process could take more than nine months in total.
Based on the most recent public broadband coverage data, and states’ NTIA-approved BEAD spending plans, there are likely about 1,041,099 BEAD-eligible locations remaining nationwide, according to researchers from New York Law School’s Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute.
That estimate includes both unserved locations, those lacking broadband speeds beyond 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload, and underserved locations, those with access to speeds faster than 25 * 3 Mbps but slower than 100 * 20 Mbps.
Those were the same locations eligible for BEAD funding the first time around.
ACLP found that If the new clean-up round targeted deployment at the same kinds of locations, NTIA could make available about $5.3 billion of BEAD’s remaining funding — still about $21 billion by NTIA estimates — to reach those locations. The agency said it would cap new funding based on the eligible locations in each state and territory and the average per-location cost of their approved BEAD plans.
But internal NTIA estimates of newly eligible locations obtained by Broadband Breakfast don’t match the unserved and underserved total. The agency put the total eligible location count at about 477,000, and the collective cost cap at about $2.37 billion.
After reviewing NTIA’s tentative location counts, ACLP director Michael Santorelli said they matched the group's calculations for remaining unserved locations, excluding underserved.
He said in an email that, based on NTIA’s lists, locations served by unlicensed fixed wireless would likely be ineligible for the clean-up round if their reported speed exceeded 25 * 3 Mbps. Those locations were not previously ineligible by default.
An NTIA spokesperson declined to comment.
The agency’s eligible location lists were tentative and had not yet officially been sent to states, but the policy notice outlining the new bidding round only mentioned underserved locations once.
Santorelli wasn’t happy about the prospect of limiting the clean-up round to unserved locations.
“If the goal is to close the digital divide once and for all, then why stop at unserved, especially when broadband is now defined as 100/200 Mbps? Or does this mean there will be a third BEAD round to address underserved?,” he said in an email. “That we're still splitting hairs on what's served or unserved or underserved when there are billions of dollars available to bring broadband to every location is bordering on absurdity.”
Under the 2021 Infrastructure Act, BEAD’s main bidding round had to be targeted at both unserved and underserved locations. But the clean-up round is being conducted under a separate provision of the law that gives NTIA more discretion, New Mexico broadband director Jeff Lopez said in an interview last week.
80 percent rule
Under BEAD rules, project areas had to be at least 80 percent un- or underserved. Since bidding finished last year, ACLP found many BEAD project areas now appeared to have more already served locations than was originally allowed.
The group found that for projects aimed at underserved locations, 89 percent of BEAD projects now covered areas where more than 20 percent of the locations are already served. For projects targeting underserved locations, the figure was 69 percent.
Regardless of the rule, that could make some projects less attractive, as the remaining un- and underserved locations with no competitor are even more remote and hard to reach.
“This may result in project descoping or contract revisions to comply with the statute and could add to the time, costs, and complexity associated with wrangling the ever-changing BEAD map to pinpoint remaining unserved locations,” Santorelli and ACLP researcher Alex Karras wrote in the report.
