Virginia BEAD ‘Bargain’ Round Delayed Pending NTIA Signoff
90-day shot clock ticks while state waits on Washington.
June 26, 2025 – Internet providers hoping to compete for broadband grants in Virginia will have to wait a little longer, the state broadband office said Wednesday.
Despite quickly rewriting its initial proposal to comply with new federal mandates, the Virginia Office of Broadband has been waiting more than a week for a federal signoff that’s required before it can proceed.
Virginia submitted a revised implementation plan on June 18 in response to a sweeping policy shift by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which dramatically overhauled the rules for the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program to prioritize lowest-cost projects.
FROM SPEEDING BEAD SUMMIT
Panel 1: How Are States Thinking About Reasonable Costs Now?
Panel 2: Finding the State Versus Federal Balance in BEAD
Panel 3: Reacting to the New BEAD NOFO Guidance
Panel 4: Building, Maintaining and Adopting Digital Workforce Skills
But while the Trump NTIA has pushed states to move faster – compressing what was once a year-long process into just three months – it had yet to approve Virginia’s paperwork as of the end of the business day on Wednesday, June 25.
Until that signoff is secured, Virginia cannot move forward with subgrantee selection or award new grants from its $1.48 billion allocation under the federal broadband expansion program.
“The Virginia Office of Broadband is delaying the start of the ‘Benefit of the Bargain Round’ until NTIA provides approval of Virginia's Initial Proposal Correction Letter,” the state office wrote in a statement Wednesday, emphasizing it had “swiftly implemented changes outlined in the BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice.”
Once that approval is granted, the broadband office said it would immediately distribute portal links to eligible applicants and post an updated schedule for the Benefit of the Bargain round on its program website.
Correction letter required by NTIA
Submitting the correction letter was just one of several new procedural steps required under the “Benefit of the Bargain” framework, which was introduced in NTIA’s June 6 restructuring notice. That policy change effectively reset the BEAD process nationwide – requiring all states to rework subgrantee selection criteria they’ve spent years developing and re-launch their competitive process within 90 days.
The federal deadline to complete the entire process was set for September 4, but some states have already signaled they will struggle to meet it. Texas has formally requested an extension, noting that it was in the middle of its first subgrantee round when the June 6 guidance dropped.
Even under the original timeline, Texas had planned to extend awards into 2026, the state’s broadband director Greg Conte said Tuesday.
Virginia has already published a provisional calendar for its new grant round, signaling just how compressed the process has become. The state closed its Letter of Intent window on June 23 and had planned to notify provisional subgrantees by July 16, opening and closing negotiations over a 10-day span and finalizing selections by August 8 for public comment – just under a month before the federal deadline.
That timeline was now on hold pending NTIA’s approval of the state’s revised proposal.
