BEAD Participants Could Face Tough Finances: Moffett
NTIA has been adamant that it’s preventing defaults
WASHINGTON, July 29, 2026 – Rural fiber providers participating in the government’s flagship broadband expansion program might have a difficult road ahead, according to one telecom analyst.
“We’d predict there will be a lot of bankruptcies among the [fiber-to-the-home] builders that won over 70% of the monies,” MoffettNathanson founder Craig Moffett wrote in a Wednesday investor note.
That’s largely because of how low-density the remaining locations are, he wrote. Since the 2021 Infrastructure Law that created the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment was passed, eligible locations have shrunk from about 10 million to under 4 million as projects begin to get underway.
Those builds were either backed by private funds or the American Rescue Plan Act, but they ended up removing a lot of the low-hanging fruit, Moffett wrote. He noted that BEAD projects were 60 percent public money based on government data, compared to just 20 percent for the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund in 2019
“That speaks to how rural the mix is today versus the RDOF program just seven years ago; nobody would build to these locations without government help,” he wrote.
The number of eligible locations is also set to be reduced further, although locations will be removed from satellite grants, which are much cheaper on a per-location basis than fiber.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is managing the program, is asking states to remove from satellite awards locations that new federal maps show as served.
That could result in 35-43 percent of all satellite locations being taken off the BEAD map, according to an analysis by New York Law School. That’s about 310,000-370,000 locations.
NTIA has been adamant that it’s taking the necessary steps to prevent defaults and address them when they do happen.
NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth told lawmakers in June that a little over 1 percent, or 40,000, of BEAD’s roughly 4 million locations were affected by providers backing out of awards. It’s still early in the process, and those represent providers refusing to sign their grant award, rather than an in-progress build becoming unsustainable.
“I think that’s to be expected in a program this size,” she said. “We planned and we have a process in place to ensure that areas that are subject to changes get served.”
She said NTIA was working with states to find backup plans for “about a dozen” states in which providers had refused BEAD awards.
Roth said other agency efforts were aimed at reducing the likelihood of defaults, like an electronic permitting system and a prohibition on future opex subsidies for BEAD locations. The latter is aimed at ensuring participating ISPs plan on their projects making money.
The agency is also monitoring the fiber supply, Roth said. AI companies are clamoring for the same U.S.-made fiber that rural ISPs will need for BEAD projects.
Roth told lawmakers that major fiber producers had committed to setting aside capacity for BEAD participants, and that the agency didn’t anticipate issuing a waiver of its domestic manufacturing requirements.
