States $20 Billion Under Budget for BEAD So Far
AAPB's Gigi Sohn said she's trying to convince more Republicans to advocate for states keeping that money.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2025 – The 49 states that have reported their tentative Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program awards are collectively $20 billion under budget, according to data posted by state broadband offices. That’s nearly half of the program’s $42.45 billion in funding.
Those results are not set in stone, as the Commerce Department needs to approve preliminary results before contracts can be signed with grant winners. But spending doesn’t appear likely to increase, as the agency is focused on further pushing down deployment costs before giving the final go-ahead.
It’s not clear what will happen to BEAD money not awarded to ISPs for broadband deployment grants. States had been planning to use leftover money for “non-deployment” efforts like digital skills trainings or workforce development, but the Trump administration isn’t eager to see much of that kind of spending.
Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration rescinded approval for any non-deployment activities, including some already underway, in June and said more guidance would be forthcoming.
Gigi Sohn, head of the American Association for Public Broadband and a senior fellow with the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, said on Light Reading’s The Divide podcast she was working to convince more Republican lawmakers and governors to advocate for states keeping the money as planned.
“The only thing that’s going to turn this around,” she said, “is to try to get state legislators, governors – particularly Republicans – to weigh in and say, ‘That’s our money. By statute that’s our money.’”
Ten House Democrats have asked NTIA for more clarity and defended the previously planned uses of the funds, but Sohn noted that “nobody in this administration is listening to Democrats.”
Republicans supporting non-deployment funds
A small number of Republicans have weighed in in support of states hanging onto their leftover BEAD funds. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry wrote Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last month proposing he allow states to keep the cash as long as they spend it on boosting AI infrastructure or certain “America First” policies, which have some overlap with what states were already considering.
Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W. Va., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., have also said they’re pushing the administration to preserve their states’ full BEAD allocations.
“But we need more. We need a lot more,” Sohn said.
States’ full BEAD allocations are already in Treasury accounts that state broadband offices can access, and the law standing up BEAD contemplates funding for broadband adoption initiatives, but states need NTIA clearance before spending the money. The agency’s public comments and communications with broadband offices have led Sohn and other observers to surmise NTIA would prefer much or all of the leftover money be returned to the federal government.
“This is a deployment program. It’s not a non-deployment program,” NTIA Chief of Staff Brooke Donilon said at the Mountain Connect conference in August. “We’re going to deliver on the benefit of the bargain, and we will figure out how much we have for non-deployment. Until we know how much money we’re talking, it’s hard to talk about the policy.”
Michael O’Rielly, a senior fellow at the Free State Foundation and former Republican commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, said in a Tuesday blog post that “a healthy portion, or perhaps all, of this money should be returned to the U.S. Treasury.”
He also floated setting aside some of the leftover money to fund deployment in places where BEAD winners default.
“Any calculations of BEAD savings will need to account for the simple fact that not all broadband builds will happen as planned,” he wrote. “Despite best intentions, experience suggests that a reserve funding stream could be useful to handle this inevitability.”
Ensuring the broadband deployments are adopted
There’s a general desire among state broadband offices to keep the money and use it to support broadband adoption through things like device discounts and teaching people how to access services and avoid scams online. States that estimated they would have a surplus of funds detailed non-deployment plans in documents submitted to the Biden administration in 2023.
States and other proponents have argued the adoption efforts would ensure people subscribe to and use the infrastructure funded by the program.
“In order to achieve the TRUE benefit of the bargain we need to ensure the long-term sustainability of infrastructure deployment through critical enabling investments identified in the legislation that created the BEAD Program,” Maine’s broadband office said in an email to stakeholders last month.
California, which received the second largest BEAD allocation, is the only state that has yet to report tentative results. It was given a deadline extension, and is set to publish its draft results by Nov. 14.
Member discussion