Louisiana Accepting Applications for BEAD Grants
The first application round will close August 29, with a final second round to follow.
WASHINGTON, August 19, 2024 – Louisiana has started accepting applications for projects under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, the state announced on Monday.
“We’re really thrilled that the program has officially launched,” Veneeth Iyengar, the state’s broadband director, said at a press conference with Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry. “Within the next six to eight weeks, we’ll know what the results are for these projects that are impacting every single parish in the state of Louisiana.”
The press conference was streamed on YouTube.
Louisiana was allocated more than $1.3 billion in BEAD funding under the 2021 Infrastructure Act, which put a total of $42.5 billion toward expanding broadband infrastructure nationally. Louisiana was one of the first states to start accepting grant applications under BEAD.
The portal for providers to apply for grant money opened on August 15 and will close on August 29. Louisiana plans to accept a second round of applications after that, an effort to solicit bids for areas that don’t get provider interest in the first round.
The state, repeatedly among the first to gain various federal approvals necessary to implement BEAD, was the second to start accepting grant applications as part of the program. Montana said it was first by opening its BEAD application portal on August 13.
Before opening up the application process, states and territories have to accept and process challenges to government broadband coverage data, a three-to-four-month process most states are still undergoing. Louisiana’s challenge process resulted in a final list of nearly 140,000 BEAD-eligible homes and businesses. The Census bureau counted a total of about 2 million housing units and 100,000 businesses in the state.
Louisiana’s BEAD money will fund a second iteration of its Granting Unserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities (GUMBO) grant program, which has already spent more than $131 million in Treasury Department money to serve more than 65,000 locations. The state reported in July that 80 percent of those projects will be completed in the next year, with the remaining builds wrapping up by the third quarter of 2025. In that iteration of the program, 18 ISPs participated, while 33 have gone through the pre-qualification process for the state’s BEAD program.
Iyengar said his office could have extra money left over after connecting all its BEAD-eligible locations, in which case the state would stand up a grant program to support workforce development and other efforts. He said the state intends to fund as much fiber as possible in keeping with BEAD rules, but reiterated that the program can fund other technologies in places where it’s too expensive to lay fiber.
