California BEAD Plan Approved
The state’s LEO locations decreased by nearly half compared to its draft plan. Fiber and fixed wireless didn’t significantly change.
WASHINGTON, July 20, 2026 – The Commerce Department approved Friday California’s spending plan under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.
That now leaves Illinois as the only state that has yet to receive permission to fund projects with its slice of the $42.45 billion program’s funding. Most other states received approval in late 2025 or early 2026.
California received the second largest allocation under the program with more than $1.8 billion.
California’s approved plan would reach about 270,500 homes and businesses, down from the 339,000 locations in the state’s draft plan released last year.
Of the approved locations, California would fund fiber to 53 percent, low-Earth orbit satellite to 27 percent, and fixed wireless to 20 percent. That’s compared to the draft plan’s 44 percent fiber, 41 percent LEO, and 15 percent fixed wireless.
The actual numbers of locations getting fixed wireless and fiber didn’t significantly change between the draft and the newly approved plan — fiber shrunk by about 5,000 and fixed wireless grew by about 1,000.
The large reduction in locations came mostly from LEO. Those locations were reduced by nearly half, falling to 73,000 from the draft’s 138,000.
California is set to spend $1.4 billion, or about 70 percent of its allocation, on deployment projects. That level of spending is rare after Trump administration changes aimed at reducing project costs.
Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration has asked states to remove certain locations from their LEO awards, citing new federal maps that show expanded terrestrial coverage, or that the location in question is not a home or business.
An NTIA spokesperson said in an email that California’s approved results incorporated those changes.
Other states, which are further along in the BEAD process, will have to amend contracts with satellite ISPs or incorporate the changes as they work toward those agreements.
That request applies to about half the LEO locations in multiple states, state officials said last week. An analysis from New York Law School found 35 percent to 42 percent of satellite locations across the program could be affected.
At a June 30 House oversight hearing, before the plan was approved, NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth had told lawmakers there were some “mapping anomalies” the agency found during its review of California’s tentative awards.
“There were several examples in California where there were requests for really exorbitant amounts of money, ostensibly to serve apartments in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “So we had to work with the state to ensure that we address those mapping challenges.”
She said “the ball is in California’s court” in terms of responding to the agency’s requested changes.
California's plan will still need to be approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, BEAD's grants manager, before it can sign its agreement with NTIA and start accessing its funds.
Illinois status
At the same hearing, Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., said NTIA told the state on May 26 that it would have to cut its deployment spending by $100 million to get federal approval.
The state is planning to spend most of its more than $1 billion allocation on deployment projects based on its draft plan.
“We have communicated changes to Illinois that we need to see,” Roth said. “The proposal that was submitted to us just didn’t meet the mark, in terms of finding efficiencies and meeting the principles of the benefit of the bargain reforms.”
She said the agency was also waiting on a response from Illinois, “and we look forward to seeing their revised proposal.”
