Commerce Inspector General: Project Selection Timelines a Potential Struggle for BEAD

WASHINGTON, March 27, 2025 – Accelerated grantwriting and deployment timelines, along with inconsistent communications from the government, are potential obstacles to federally funded broadband deployments, the Commerce Department’s inspector general said in a report.

The agency houses the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which manages billions in broadband funding, including the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, as well as funding for middle mile infrastructure and Tribal broadband. 

Three states, the entities administering BEAD grants under the NTIA’s watch, received the greenlight on spending plans in the final days of the Biden administration, but the money has been held up as the Trump administration contemplates changes to the program’s fiber preference and other rules.

More than 30 have started fielding grant applications. It’s not clear whether future changes will ultimately require states to alter or redo their project selection.

The report was compiled starting in July 2023 and published March 20. It included findings from interviews with state broadband offices and surveys of those offices and industry groups. Commerce’s acting inspector general, Jill Baisinger, was fired in January along with her counterparts at several other agencies.

Roderick Anderson has taken Baisinger's post, according to the department's website. He had formerly held the position and was replaced himself during the Biden adminstration after a Congressional investigation into allegations of misconduct.

Eight of the recently fired IGs have sued the Trump administration, arguing their firings were illegal since Congress was not provided advance notice.

By the law standing up BEAD, deployments have to be completed four years after a grant is awarded, although states can extend that up to a year in extenuating circumstances. Some state officials, four of the 13 interviewed, said this was problematic due to short construction seasons in certain states and the extremely remote nature of the unserved areas targeted by BEAD – some locations are only accessible by barge or by plane. Officials also said extreme weather events, like hurricanes that affected areas not used to flooding last year, could create unexpected delays.

“NTIA officials said they are not open to giving blanket extensions upfront. They will take significant issues into consideration and will wait for further data before granting project extensions,” the report said.

State officials also said the project selection timeline could be difficult to reach. Tentative grant winners are due to the NTIA within a year of a state’s initial BEAD plan’s approval, the last of which came at the end of 2024.

“Broadband officials said their greatest concern is meeting the aggressive timeline in conjunction with administering multiple federal and state grants simultaneously, which could limit the pool of applicants, decrease competition, burden already strained staffing resources, increase administrative expenses, and contribute to overall inefficiency,” the report said.

NTIA officials told the OIG that they were aware states had concerns about meeting the deadline, but disagreed it was overly aggressive. They noted the program has been in a yearslong planning phase already, and that states had met previous deadlines for getting that work done.

State offices were also concerned that a nationwide uptick in deployments would exacerbate an already existing labor shortage in the industry – the Fiber Broadband Association estimates an extra 58,000 broadband construction workers and technicians will be necessary to avoid BEAD delays, plus an extra 119,200 over the next 10 years to account for retirements. Other industry groups lamented a lack of national, standardized training programs or licenses and a lack of messaging promoting careers in the telecom industry.

Even if a state can find prospective trainees, not always easy in rural areas, some officials noted to OIG that training can last one to two years and would be difficult to expedite given how technical the work is.

NTIA staff said they provided states with workforce development guidance and had discussed the issue with more than 75 stakeholder groups like ISPs, vendors, and labor unions. The agency also provided “state-specific workforce research findings” to each broadband office and has been working to connect broadband offices with existing in-state workforce development programs. 

Some states said communication from NTIA could be slow or inconsistent, which at times had strained their staff resources in the face of rigid deadlines. Interviewees and survey respondents generally reported a positive working relationship with their federal points of contact though, the report noted.

Agency staff responded they were “aware of the perception of untimely communications and

inconsistent guidance,” but noted they were developing the program in real time, and it wasn’t always possible to have guidance immediately or to produce a document that applied to the situation in each of the 56 states and territories.

“NTIA staff has worked closely with state and territory broadband offices to understand their challenges and provided technical assistance to support their efforts, consistent with the statute and NTIA’s expertise,” the agency wrote in a Feb. 28 response to a draft of the OIG report. “We will continue our outreach to states and territories to address any unresolved concerns raised in the draft report to ensure the efficient use of grant funds to connect all Americans.”