Indiana Delivers Fiber at Low Cost in First BEAD Awards
Preliminary results show $3,700 per passing for fiber builds.
WASHINGTON, April 29, 2025 – Indiana’s preliminary Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment awards show that full-fiber broadband can be delivered at relatively low cost, with projects averaging about $3,700 per location.
The Indiana Broadband Office announced Monday that it had preliminarily awarded about $347 million, or 40% of its total $868 million BEAD allocation, to cover roughly 70% of the state’s eligible locations with 100% fiber broadband projects.
The state awarded funding to 24 providers for more than 400 projects, covering about 90,000 addresses in its first round of BEAD funding.
Indiana’s results show what’s at risk if the Trump administration’s proposed changes to BEAD move forward.
Former BEAD director Evan Feinman warned last week that before his departure in March, officials at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration were discussing imposing strict price-per-location cost limits.
He said if Trump-appointed officials set caps as low as $2,500 to $5,000, it could gut many states’ fiber-first plans — with as much as 50% to 70% of BEAD-funded projects shifting to low-Earth orbit satellite service instead.
Indiana, meanwhile, still has about $521 million — or 60% of its BEAD allocation — left to award in future rounds to cover the remaining 30% of eligible locations.
“The IBO will be working with the providers to create project areas with the remaining eligible BEAD locations for Round 2,” the agency said in a release. “Awards will be announced publicly later this year after we have received provisional approval from the NTIA.”
