Virginia Moves Forward on BEAD Contracts
One ISP backed out of a small project, but other winners are scooping up those locations
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2026 – Virginia’s broadband office is moving forward on ISP grant agreements under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.
The state has signed agreements with 19 providers so far, and the broadband office said the remaining three would sign their papers by Aug. 16.
Virginia is looking to spend more than $545 million to get service to about 85,000 homes and businesses. Based on data the state submitted to the Commerce Department, the signed contracts cover about 64,000 locations.
Providers can now start necessary environmental review work, the broadband office said in an email.
ISPs that finalized their awards include SpaceX, Verizon, Breezeline, and Brightspeed, among local providers and phone cooperatives. The three that were held up were Amazon, Comcast, and All Points Broadband.
That’s because one ISP, Wi-Fiber, balked and declined to sign a grant agreement for the 1,800 locations it had won. Amazon, Comcast, and All Points are each taking some of Wi-Fiber’s locations, a broadband office spokesperson said in an email, which delayed the signing.
Nationwide, projects under the $42.45 billion BEAD program are just beginning to get off the ground. States are still hammering out agreements with ISPs, who then have to navigate permitting and environmental reviews.
Virginia is looking to get fiber to about 80 percent of its locations, satellite to 13 percent, cable to 6 percent, and fixed wireless to 1 percent. It was allocated nearly $1.5 billion under BEAD, but the Trump administration has made an effort to reduce deployment costs.
SpaceX told state broadband offices earlier this year that it could be “untenable” for satellite operators (itself and Amazon) to participate in BEAD without being exempted from certain rules.
That was publicly shot down by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, but SpaceX has since signed grant agreements with several states. Amazon has finalized at least one deal, but backed out of two others.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is managing BEAD at the federal level, last month asked states to reduce the locations they awarded to satellite providers. The agency cited new federal maps showing expanded rural coverage or misidentified buildings.
That could require amending existing contracts if they’ve already been signed.
Analysts at MoffettNathanson predict there will be some defaults down the line in BEAD’s fiber builds. The eligible locations are all extremely rural, they wrote last week, and increases in cost could quickly make projects unviable.
NTIA has said it’s working to mitigate defaults.
NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth told lawmakers in June that a little over 1 percent, or 40,000, of BEAD’s roughly 4 million locations were affected by providers backing out of awards.
“I think that’s to be expected in a program this size,” she said. “We planned and we have a process in place to ensure that areas that are subject to changes get served.”
She said NTIA was working with states to find backup plans for “about a dozen” states in which providers had refused BEAD awards.
