A couple dozen people still show up for the weekly Office of Broadband Development Office Hours where they review what’s happening with BEAD and answer questions. The one-hour meeting is often much shorter than an hour but it’s a good time if/when you do have questions.
Highlights from presentation:
- Pre-qualification applications are coming in
- Sub Round 11A opens March 24 – fiber and priority projects. You can propose your own location areas
- Two new office hours added
From Chat:
- Bead Pre-Qualification Portal. If you have any technical questions on using the BEAD Grantor Portal, please email mnhelpdesk@ready.net.
- List of unserved and underserved locations by county in Minnesota. Download the “BEAD Eligible Locations by County (PDF)” or “BEAD Eligible Locations by County (XLSX)“
- Updated BEAD Pre-Qualification FAQ PDF and BEAD Subgrantee Selection FAQ PDF
- Please continue to submit BEAD FAQs through our online form, available here: https://forms.office.com/g/jE9EC1Zzpv
- Office hours registration for next week: March 18, register here
- New sessions open for registration: April 8, register here and April 15, register here
Questions:
What about federal changes to BEAD?
We are proceeding under guidance we currently have. But we stayed tuned for changes.
The list posted on 3/3, there are about 10,000 addresses with an asterisk. Is this the final final list?
No there will continue to be changes. If we may see address dropping of the list. But 10,000 seems a lot. Lots of folks said their ACAM projects were going to be getting fiber so that removed a lot of addresses.