NTIA Has a Final BEAD Proposal in Hand
NTIA official confirms agency has received final proposal but did not provide the name
ASPEN, Colo., August 18, 2025 – One state, territory, or Washington, D.C., has submitted its final proposal for funding from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.
On Monday, National Telecommunications and Information Administration official Adam Cassady told attendees at a Technology Policy Institute forum in Aspen, Colo., that the agency had received a final proposal though he didn’t name the eligible entity.
“I think we’ve actually just gotten our first final proposal in, so we have 90 days to action that,” he said.
Later Cassady confirmed that “we’ve just gotten our first, final proposal and we’ve given ourselves a 90 day deadline.”
Cassady’s announcement comes 18 days before Sept. 4, the deadline for all states to submit their proposals. Critics of the NTIA’s revisions to the program, which required states to rerun bidding rounds and submit their final proposals within a 90 day timeline, had argued that the Sept. 4 deadline was impractical.
"The Trump Administration is causing chaos and confusion amongst the states and territories who now have an impractical timeline to make the massive changes you have ordered,” 22 House Democrats, led by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., wrote in July. “...Forcing states to rewrite entire program criteria, add and remove broadband serviceable locations (BSLs) from broadband maps, and re-run subgrantee selection rounds in less than 90 days is an unfair and unrealistic expectation, especially given the fact that it took the Department 137 days to issue new guidance…the claim that NTIA will approve all 56 states and territories’ proposals and subgrantee selections in a timely manner simply does not pass muster."
The early submission from one state appears to have put a dent in that argument. The NTIA’s BEAD Progress Dashboard did not show which state had submitted its final proposal at the time of publication, though some states have already released their results from their Benefit of the Bargain Rounds.
During the event, Broadband Breakfast asked Cassady why early state BEAD proposals seemed to lack fixed wireless −and asked how NTIA would handle Elon Musk’s push for more Starlink participation in Virginia and Louisiana.
Cassady responded that NTIA intentionally gave states flexibility to set their own technology priorities, though NTIA had reserved the right to make edits to those proposals. He noted that publicly posted final proposals had not yet been approved by the NTIA, and that changes would likely occur before those proposals were approved. He declined to comment on Musk’s assertions.
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