Hawaiʻi Begins $30.7 Million BEAD Broadband Buildout
Once envisioned at $95 million, the buildout will now reach the same locations for a third that cost.
WASHINGTON, August 11, 2026 – Hawaiʻi has moved to active construction on its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment buildout.
The Office of the Governor and the University of Hawaiʻi finalized a $34 million contract with Hawaiian Telcom to deliver fiber-optic service to approximately 5,800 homes that currently lack modern broadband access, the office said Tuesday.
A breakdown of BEAD award data lists Hawaiian Telcom’s deployment award at $29,928,000 for fiber to 5,725 locations plus 24 community anchor institutions.
The state has made a separate preliminary award to Amazon Leo at $771,000 for low Earth orbit satellite service to 1,285 locations – a contract Hawaiʻi’s announcement did not mention.
The combined award totals $30.7 million, just 20 percent of Hawaiʻi’s overall BEAD allocation of $149.5 million.
Of the roughly 7,000 remaining unserved and underserved locations in Hawaiʻi, about 82 percent will be served with fiber and 18 percent through low Earth orbit satellite.
The terrain driving that mix is distinct to Hawaiʻi. Most of the state’s rural areas sit on Hawaiian Home Lands, a trust of roughly 200,000 acres established in 1920 to provide homestead land for Native Hawaiians, which gives Hawaiʻi some land-access problems.
Another geographic challenge distinct to Hawaiʻi is that much of the ground is volcanic rock, making underground fiber installation far more difficult.
The office also had to account for environmental hazards, citing climate change fueled sea level rises, hurricanes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity as high risks for broadband deployments.
Amazon’s satellite locations are concentrated in the state’s most difficult-to-reach terrain, including mountainous areas on several islands and the sole broadband serviceable location on Niʻihau, the westernmost inhabited Hawaiian island.
Hawaiʻi’s interactive BEAD coverage map shows planned fiber and satellite locations by area.
Federal rewrite cut buildout costs by two-thirds
Hawaiʻi’s original draft proposal, released for public comment in August 2025, had allocated closer to $95 million toward deployment.
The final, post-restructuring award came in at roughly a third of that, suggesting competitive rebidding, and a greater willingness to use satellite service in the hardest-to-reach areas, sharply reduced the price of closing the state’s remaining coverage gaps.
In June 2025, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued a restructuring policy notice ordering states to move away from a fiber-priority framework toward a technology-neutral, lowest-cost selection process, dubbed the “Benefit of the Bargain” round.
Notably, Hawaiʻi’s 2023 initial proposal never committed to serving all locations with fiber outright. In that filing, the University of Hawaiʻi declined to set a specific high-cost threshold – the price point above which it would consider non-fiber technology –saying instead it would use responses to its grant solicitations to determine, case by case, which locations might need a non-fiber solution.
States had until September 4, 2025, to resubmit proposals under the new rules. Hawaiʻi’s final proposal was submitted that day and approved by NTIA on November 18, 2025, one of 18 states or territories.
Hawaiʻi’s plan bets on Amazon Leo
Notably, the LEO award went to Amazon Leo, the rebranded Project Kuiper satellite service, rather than SpaceX’s Starlink, which has won substantial BEAD business in other states.
Amazon said in early July its LEO service had crossed a threshold, roughly 390 satellites in orbit, that its executives characterized as enough to support continuous coverage across its initial target latitudes, putting an initial commercial rollout on track for later this year.
But the company remains well behind its own federal deployment schedule: the FCC required Amazon to have half of its planned constellation, about 1,618 satellites, in orbit and operating by July 30, 2026. Amazon fell far short, and the agency granted it a limited waiver in June.
As a condition, satellites Amazon deploys after that date will temporarily lose priority spectrum access until the company either hits the 50 percent mark or 20 months pass, whichever comes first. Amazon’s full 3,236 satellite constellation isn’t due until 2029.
Under the finalized contracts, Hawaiian Telcom’s performance period runs four years, while Amazon Leo’s runs ten years. That longer runway stems from the Trump administration’s 2025 restructuring of BEAD, which gave satellite providers double the time to meet performance benchmarks than other technologies.
Locations slated for fiber will be eligible for speeds up to 3,000 Mbps symmetrical, while satellite locations are expected to meet the program’s 100 * 20 Megabit per second (Mbps) performance floor.
Hawaiʻi’s own final proposal explains state broadband officials determined that LEO providers, while able to meet minimum performance requirements during the contract period, did not have the spectrum and architectural capacity to scale to future demand in the way fiber networks can.
Hawaiian Telcom’s much larger fiber ambitions
The state’s BEAD investment is layered on top of Hawaiian Telcom’s separate, larger commitment: a $1.7 billion private buildout the company says will make Hawaiʻi the first fully fiber-enabled state in the country.
The BEAD award adds roughly 5,800 locations to a Hawaiian Telcom fiber network that already passed about 400,800 addresses statewide at the end of 2024
“This incredible BEAD award complements our more sustainable, long-term investment,” said Su Shin, president of Hawaiian Telcom.
Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke, who oversees the state’s Connect Kākou broadband initiative, has framed the BEAD award as one piece of a broader infrastructure chain.
State officials have said Hawaiʻi has more than $390 million available to achieve universal internet access and digital literacy for all.
Construction on BEAD-funded projects is expected to begin this year, with Hawaiian Telcom and Amazon Leo expected to begin notifying individual households as service becomes available in their area.
The deployment milestone comes shortly after Garret Yoshimi, the University of Hawaiʻi’s broadband director, retired in June.
Yoshimi, UH’s longtime vice president for information technology and chief information officer, had overseen Connect Kākou’s broadband effort for more than a decade, since its earliest planning stages.
Yoshimi’s departure comes at a symbolic moment for the program he helped build.
As UH’s broadband director, he guided Hawaiʻi’s BEAD effort from its 2023 initial proposal through last year’s federal restructuring — work UH President Wendy Hensel credited in April, calling him “widely respected in his field” and someone who “will be greatly missed across the University of Hawaiʻi.”
