New Mexico Broadband Office Likely to Downsize After BEAD
Colorado and Texas officials said their broadband offices would focus on other programs with current staff.
DALLAS, April 15, 2026 – The New Mexico broadband office is likely to downsize after it’s done managing the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, a top official said Tuesday.
“In New Mexico, we do have a plan, and I think the plan will be to scale down a little bit,” Aquiles Trujillo, deputy director of the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access & Expansion, said at the Connected America show in Dallas. “I think after BEAD is over, we’ll have a much smaller office.”
The office intentionally scaled up to ensure enough local knowledge was brought to bear on a challenging problem of connecting people in the sparsely populated state, according to Trujillo. He said the office would likely focus on addressing broadband affordability and Tribal connectivity issues when it did scale back.
New Mexico is launching a broadband subsidy for low-income households, an effort to replace the federal Affordable Connectivity Program that ran out of cash in 2024. The program, called LITAP, will have $10 million in state funding in the first year and up to $45 million in subsequent years.
BEAD networks have to be constructed in four years and have to comply with certain rules for 10 years. Those time periods start when ISPs sign contracts with the state, something New Mexico is moving toward but hasn’t done yet. Trujillo didn’t say at what point the downsizing would happen.
Brandy Reitter, executive director of the Colorado broadband office, noted some state legislatures stood up their broadband offices specifically to manage the $42.45 billion BEAD program. She said she hoped those states didn’t shutter the offices once the program was done.
“I would highly encourage those states to make sure they consider the value of a broadband office and what it does for constituents in a state. It’s a big deal,” she said. “Even after the BEAD program, there’s going to be a whole regulatory and compliance piece to this ongoing for 10 years.”
Beyond BEAD
In addition to managing other initiatives focused on middle mile infrastructure and broadband adoption, Reitter said her office and others had come to serve as advocates for local governments and ISPs before national policymakers like the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is managing BEAD, and the Federal Communications Commission.
“I learn a lot from my ISPs and communities. I feel like I’ve kind of taken on this duty to make sure their voices are part of the conversation,” she said. “Because I’m in a lot of rooms where they’re not, you know?”
Reitter said Colorado would likely unpause a state program that’s been on ice for two years and use the money to fund deployments to areas not covered by BEAD, or where BEAD providers default on their projects.
Bryant Clayton, head of Texas’s broadband office, said his team would likely still be around after BEAD. The state-funded Broadband Infrastructure Fund provides a $1.5 billion pot for infrastructure and affordability programs, among other things.
Not all of that has been spent, Clayton said, and it doesn’t have to be until at least 2035. He said the office would continue with its middle mile and workforce development programs. The latter is focused on fiber splicers but could expand to other jobs in the future, he said.
The Texas broadband office also funds staff positions with councils of governments – groups of local governments – across the state that serve as in-house broadband experts.
“I see that as kind of being our eyes and ears on the ground, helping us understand what the local governments and communities need in terms of broadband,” Clayton said. “They can also address their needs on their own if they choose to do so.”
Non-deployment
About $22 billion of BEAD’s budget won’t actually be used for broadband deployment, in large part a result of the Trump administration’s desire to push costs as low as possible.
Many states have hundreds of millions left over, and Texas will have about $2 billion. NTIA hasn’t yet released guidance on how states will be able to use that money – approval for any non-deployment activities was rescinded when NTIA overhauled the program’s rules in June 2025.
Clayton said it was difficult to plan how to spend that much money without guidance, but he had heard from companies that having a sufficient workforce is going to be a problem.
“We’re actively planning for how these could be used, but we’re also waiting for guidance,” he said. “We’re not quite sure what to expect from NTIA and what they will allow states to use the funds for.”
Trujillo said funding for ensuring networks were resilient to natural disaster would be beneficial.
Reitter said she would support a number of uses, including workforce development, middle mile infrastructure, and deployments to areas BEAD missed either through bad eligibility data or defaults.
Chandler Vaughan, acting director of Virginia’s broadband office, said he would support a “clean-up round” of extra deployment. He said the best case scenario would be a menu of multiple options states could choose from.
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