NTIA

Monitoring, Enforcement Important as BEAD Gets Underway: Expert

Carol Mattey said states should include contractual provisions to claw back already paid funding in the event of nonperformance.

Jake Neenan

Mar 11, 2026 — 2 min read

Photo of Travis Sheetz, a worker with the Mason County (Wash.) Public Utility District, installs fiber optic cable on a utility pole on Aug. 4, 2021 by Ted S. Warren, file/AP

WASHINGTON, March 11, 2026 – As projects funded by the Commerce Department’s $42.45 billion broadband expansion program start to get underway, monitoring and oversight are going to be increasingly important, a broadband funding expert said Wednesday.

“I would be astonished if there weren’t defaults, just because every program has defaults,” said Carol Mattey, head of Mattey Consulting and former deputy bureau chief at the Federal Communications Commission.

She spoke about the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program on a Fiber Broadband Association webinar Wednesday. Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration has approved all state and territory spending plans under the program, except for California, Illinois, and Oklahoma, and states are beginning the process of signing grant agreements with winning ISPs.