It’s like I put a question under my pillow last night asking about BEAD striving to bring broadband to all locations and the answer fairy replaced it with Carol Mattey’s article for Benton Institute for Broadband & Society on Setting the Extremely High Cost Per Location Threshold for BEAD. Here are three high level points from the article:

• It’s highly unlikely that many states will be able to use their BEAD allocation to get fiber 100 percent everywhere. There are a lot of reasons for that, but can we at least agree with that basic point, and move on?

• Congress and NTIA have given the states the responsibility for deciding where to draw the line—which areas are just “too costly” for fiber. The relative mix will vary from state to state, due to a variety of factors, including geography, who’s already in the state, and other rules that each state adopts for BEAD, such as how it defines proposed project areas.

• There will be locations served with other technologies. Fixed wireless and satellite are not excluded from BEAD. There’s a market for other technologies.

Another key point is that each state can define their own high cost threshold and it sounds as if most will do that after they receive initial bids, not before.

This is a helpful and pragmatic view of BEAD.

The frustration is that it sets up a two-tiered system where some (hopefully most) people get better internet access (fiber-like access) and some do not. It doesn’t feel fair but it’s the best we can do without a limitless budget. It feels a lot less fair if your cousin a mile closer to town gets fiber and you don’t. If you go from access to nothing to satellite, that will feel more like a win but if you aren’t satisfied with current broadband and you don’t see improvement that will feel like a lost opportunity.

This is where Minnesota has the advantage of experience with the Office of Broadband Development. They know the lay of the land and the players. They have a history of getting folks to work together to optimize available funding.