BEAD Eligible Locations Drop 14% in New Benefit of the Bargain Lists, a Combined 65% Drop Since Dec. 2022 BEAD Allocations
Key Takeaways
- Over the last 6 weeks, states have been updating their BEAD maps consistent with new rules issued by the Trump NTIA.
- The ACLP has aggregated and analyzed updated BEAD eligibility lists nationwide. These data indicate that, as previously predicted by the ACLP, the total number of eligible locations in these states has decreased by ~14%.
- When compared to the number of eligible locations in these states when BEAD launched a few years ago, these new data indicate that the total number of unserved and underserved location counts has plummeted by 65% since December 2022.
Overview
As detailed in updated guidance issued by the NTIA in June, states have been racing to update their maps of eligible unserved and underserved locations ahead of the mandatory “Benefit of the Bargain” round for awarding BEAD grants. This has required states to refine their maps to reflect:
- Updates to FCC data, which include newly served locations, corrections to data, etc.;
- Additional enforceable commitments from other funding programs;
- RDOF defaults; and
- The addition of approved unlicensed fixed wireless (ULFW) service.
Some have reported that changes to eligible locations might not be as dramatic as predicted by entities like the ACLP (we previously predicted a decrease of 13% after this latest round of state updates to their maps).
To analyze how profound these changes might be, we collected eligible location lists for all 50 states, and aggregated data nationwide. This aggregation includes all BSLs indicated as eligible for BEAD funding as of each state’s BOTB list and excludes non-BSL Community Anchor Institutions.
Results
A summary table is included below, and a pair of tables comparing to post-challenge and December 2022 data are also available. Based on our aggregation of data nationwide:
- There are currently ~4.2 million eligible locations (unserved and underserved).
- Eligible locations have decreased by about 663,000 since post-BEAD challenge data was released by the states, a decrease of 14%.
- The total number of eligible unserved and underserved locations has decreased by about 7.7 million since December 2022 when BEAD funding was allocated, a decrease of 65%. As in prior analyses of BEAD location lists, the impact of changes made by states ahead of BOTB varies widely across the states, from an apparent zero-change in several states, to a decrease of 88% in Connecticut.
Of note, the quality of documentation (e.g., the format of data, accompanying data dictionaries, etc.) provided by state broadband offices was notably lower compared to prior releases, likely reflecting the tight timeframes associated with BOTB. As such, this aggregation represents a best-effort attempt by the ACLP at a nationwide aggregation of BOTB lists and may not reflect the exact final counts in some states.
| State | Dec. 2022 | Post-BEAD Challenge | BOTB |
|---|---|---|---|
| US | 11,939,924 | 4,857,211 | 4,193,736 |
| AK | 105,563 | 58,186 | 51,342 |
| AL | 427,846 | 111,577 | 107,068 |
| AR | 309,541 | 82,303 | 83,842 |
| AZ | 318,741 | 184,296 | 184,280 |
| CA | 461,599 | 372,745 | 339,048 |
| CO | 236,509 | 161,885 | 163,042 |
| CT | 15,758 | 7,245 | 885 |
| DE | 14,956 | 5,715 | 5,266 |
| FL | 408,332 | 127,810 | 116,640 |
| GA | 411,625 | 165,074 | 119,780 |
| HI | 12,742 | 5,712 | 7,250 |
| IA | 154,015 | 50,695 | 44,613 |
| ID | 137,996 | 98,174 | 92,255 |
| IL | 368,075 | 171,937 | 160,209 |
| IN | 308,603 | 144,376 | 130,248 |
| KS | 144,802 | 52,343 | 26,637 |
| KY | 320,213 | 111,125 | 111,125 |
| LA | 375,715 | 200,056 | 128,046 |
| MA | 20,124 | 11,358 | 2,596 |
| MD | 67,443 | 19,723 | 9,014 |
| ME | 92,553 | 28,814 | 28,814 |
| MI | 492,323 | 243,196 | 209,767 |
| MN | 212,762 | 88,859 | 75,092 |
| MO | 444,695 | 213,404 | 214,236 |
| MS | 307,762 | 108,763 | 113,105 |
| MT | 154,033 | 70,019 | 49,430 |
| NC | 503,428 | 171,573 | 103,760 |
| ND | 9,846 | 1,770 | 1,177 |
| NE | 108,601 | 29,597 | 14,288 |
| NH | 36,276 | 9,527 | 5,250 |
| NJ | 72,536 | 11,888 | 11,888 |
| NM | 191,702 | 53,617 | 39,929 |
| NV | 60,674 | 51,837 | 27,860 |
| NY | 186,027 | 72,582 | 61,028 |
| OH | 292,320 | 117,652 | 113,874 |
| OK | 297,760 | 42,262 | 39,337 |
| OR | 184,570 | 123,873 | 106,290 |
| PA | 329,689 | 155,910 | 128,139 |
| RI | 2,895 | 7,389 | 2,897 |
| SC1 | 198,313 | 32,342 | 20,500 |
| SD | 42,593 | 9,497 | 9,497 |
| TN | 243,717 | 51,099 | 51,423 |
| TX | 1,142,255 | 247,251 | 245,035 |
| UT | 69,642 | 43,539 | 43,539 |
| VA | 423,873 | 123,544 | 123,544 |
| VT | 61,599 | 22,211 | 15,665 |
| WA | 321,564 | 216,634 | 169,600 |
| WI | 464,049 | 206,715 | 174,107 |
| WV | 312,051 | 111,922 | 72,591 |
| WY | 59,618 | 47,590 | 38,888 |
Footnotes
Note: A location list had not been made public for South Carolina as of this writing. In a June 20, 2025 newsletter, officials indicated the “the SCBBO can now project that fewer than 22,000 unserved or underserved BSLs lack an enforceable funding commitment in South Carolina – including approximately 16,500 residential, 4,000 business, and 1,700 community anchor locations.” As such, a figure of 20,500 (16,500 + 4,000) was included in our aggregated data.↩︎