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What is it?
It's been a huge week for the telecommunications industry, with $42.45 billion being released to expand internet access across the US.
BEAD stands for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment, and as a program seeks to bring high-speed broadband access to un- and under-served communities all over the country. This week, the government announced the amounts that each state would receive. Spoiler alert - it's a bonkers amount of money.
More information
You can view a ton of helpful information at the following links:
What does this mean for Katapult Pro users?
While the size of this effort is certainly unprecedented, many states will likely take the typical approach of working with telecommunications providers as an early step. The approach for these providers would be to maximize ROI by deploying to the most convenient communities that qualify.
If states take a different approach and start by identifying their highest-priority communities, they could work with design and engineering firms to maximize impact. At that point, the state could then shop communications providers to see which is willing to provide the best price.
This is a classic case of "effective" vs. "efficient," and I'm excited to see how each state learns and shares best practices in the coming months and years.
Whether you end up working directly with local government, or join the cause as a vendor for a pole owner or communications provider, our team is here to help and have your back.
Is this going to be like RDOF?
When it comes to the number of teams working across each state to map, collect, measure, and engineer pole data for pole attachment requests, BEAD is shaping up to be even bigger.
We're excited to work with new teams, and planning to train and certify existing teams to reduce friction and improve throughput across the board.
We'll keep posting updates as we learn more, and do our best to share great resources as we come across them in the coming weeks!