California BEAD Plan Delayed Again

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2025 – California’s spending plan under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program has been delayed again. It was previously set to be released Friday.

The California Public Utility Commission, which is managing the state’s $1.8 billion BEAD allocation says on its website that “On November 5, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration instructed the CPUC to delay publishing its Final Proposal for public comment.”

The state says on its site that its new final proposal submission date is Friday, Dec. 19, but notes that is tentative and subject to change. States have to take public comment for at least a week before submission, which implies a new publication date of Dec. 12, four weeks after the plan was initially slated for posting. 

Final proposals include the grant awards that tentative winners are in line for, and which BEAD-eligible locations they were selected to serve. The document needs to be approved by NTIA, which is managing BEAD at the federal level, before contracts can be signed and funds can start flowing. That’s supposed to happen by the end of the year for most states.

California’s bidding rounds wrapped up in early October. It’s the only state yet to post its results, with 36 states meeting NTIA’s Sept. 4 submission deadline and others getting extensions. The second latest posting was Texas on Oct. 13, and the state submitted its proposal on Oct. 27.

Unclear why NTIA asked for California to hold off

It’s not clear why NTIA asked California to hold off on posting the document. Asked if the agency had problems with the state’s preliminary results, an NTIA spokesperson said:

“At NTIA’s direction, California continues to work to achieve the Benefit of the Bargain to connect those in California currently without broadband. NTIA looks forward to reviewing their Final Proposal once submitted.”

A person directly familiar with NTIA’s communications with other states said it was unusual for the agency to make such a request. The CPUC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Draft final proposals have to be cleared with NTIA before they’re posted, and other people familiar with the process have described states getting pushback at that stage in some cases. NTIA is focused on keeping deployment spending low and on stepping back from the Biden administration’s explicit preference for fiber.

Based on states' initial results, they're still leaning on fiber despite being far under budget. Satellite is in line for more than it would have been under the Biden administration.

The agency is asking states to further revise some of the most expensive projects after submitting their proposals, either by negotiating awards down or, in some cases, by awarding areas to providers that commit to deploying with less support.

Time crunch for both California and NTIA

Both CPUC and NTIA have been in something of a time crunch. CPUC initially asked for a deadline extension in July, after the Trump administration issued new rules for the program in June.

The state cited its sprawling program, with hundreds of thousands of eligible locations and hundreds of in-state ISPs, along with CPUC-specific legal procedures as reasons it needed more time. 

California received a new submission deadline of Oct. 2, which was then pushed to Nov. 21 after the state asked for more time to run a second bidding round for areas that didn’t receive interest the first time around.

NTIA, for its part, committed to finishing its review of each state’s final proposal within 90 days. Since 36 states submitted on Sept. 4, the agency is aiming to look over and greenlight billions in broadband grant funding by Dec. 3, all while requesting and processing further revisions to those submitted plans.

That work continued during the government shutdown, as many staff members working on BEAD are funded by the program’s 2021 appropriation.

As Doug Adams, head of broadband marketing firm Broadband Marketers, posted on Broadband.io Thursday, NTIA’s grants manager will have to do a financial review of final proposals after the agency finishes its 90-day review, pushing the actual federal approval back about 20 more days.

NTIA also recently announced that BEAD participants will have to be exempt from state net neutrality laws throughout their entire in-state footprint. There’s no indication at this point that the requirement affected the production of California’s draft proposal, but the state has a net neutrality law on the books and will have to navigate the issue at some point.