NTIA shares long-awaited update on use of leftover BEAD funds

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) said Thursday it will make another round of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding available to states, allowing them to use some of the program’s leftover money to fund broadband projects in locations that were missed or became newly eligible after the program’s initial allocations. 

Under the new guidance, states and territories can conduct what NTIA calls a “true-up” round to identify and fund broadband serviceable locations that remain unserved. The process is intended to account for locations affected by defaults from other federal or state broadband programs, providers incorrectly reporting locations as served, changes to the FCC’s broadband maps and newly identified locations that were not previously included in the FCC’s broadband serviceable location data.

The agency said it will produce a supplemental list of newly eligible locations for the states and territories to review, and once those reviews are complete and approved, states and territories can then conduct another round of competitive bidding for those locations. 

While the new notice provides long-awaited clarity on how some remaining BEAD funds can be used, it does not resolve the broader question of how states can spend BEAD money on non-deployment activities. The NTIA has said that those items will require separate guidance.

News of how states can use the remaining funds, which total about $21 billion from the program’s original allocation of over $42 billion, follows several months of speculation about the guidance. After delaying its release a second time in March, the NTIA never specified when the guidance would be released. The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report just this week about the effectiveness of some federal broadband programs and pointed out that the NTIA had not yet provided guidance on how those remaining BEAD funds could be used.

However, the decision could add a lot of time to the program, which the Commerce Department restructured to make more efficient last summer. The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society estimated that following this process will likely add nine months or more to BEAD implementation. 

State and federal leaders have been asking for clarity on how they’d be able to use this bucket of funds since the Commerce Department’s June 2025 BEAD overhaul. The changes required states and territories to run a “Benefit of the Bargain” selection round that emphasized the lowest-cost bids and adopted a technology-neutral approach rather than the former fiber preference. 

Last August, 10 House Democrats asked the federal government to provide more clarity on the future of the funds, and in December, 164 state legislators signed a letter urging Commerce to release the full amount that states were set to receive through BEAD. Under BEAD’s original rules, leftover funds could support broadband-adjacent purposes, including workforce development, telehealth, cybersecurity, digital literacy efforts and other public services tied to broadband access. 

“Congress designed the BEAD program to be the final federal broadband deployment program, ensuring universal broadband availability for America,” Arielle Roth, assistant secretary of Commerce for communications and information and NTIA administrator, said in a news release. “Thanks to Secretary Lutnick’s Benefit of the Bargain reforms, NTIA achieved $21 billion in savings, which we can now use to address newly identified locations that may lack service. Through this targeted use of funding, we are ensuring that we close the digital divide once and for all while also protecting taxpayer dollars.”

Michael Santorelli, director of the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute at the New York Law School, said this latest announcement “signals that NTIA recognizes that conditions on the ground have changed markedly since BEAD launched and will continue to shift.”

“In other words, the broadband market and ISPs have not sat idly by waiting for BEAD funds to flow. Instead, they have continued inching out their networks to cover more people. This is great for the country and for those newly served households. But for NTIA and BEAD, this raises a host of problems, some of which are addressed in the Supplemental Notice,” Santorelli told StateScoop. 

Overall, Santorelli said the second round of funding is a positive development and that it’s too early to say whether it will substantially close the digital divide. He also pointed out that there are still major unknowns, as it’s unclear exactly how many locations will qualify, how much funding will be available, and what role technologies such as low-Earth-orbit satellite and unlicensed fixed wireless will play.

The ACLP, however, initially estimated that roughly 1.1 million locations could be addressed through this latest supplemental round of funding, with $5.6 billion to $9.3 billion potentially available. He said those figures could change significantly, as inflation, supply-chain and materials issues, as well as higher labor costs, and fragmented permitting and pole-attachment processes are pushing broadband project costs higher. 

Regardless, Santorelli said more people “getting broadband is always a great thing.” 

Revati Prasad, executive director of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, agreed, but also noted that other forms of funding, such as the Digital Equity Act funds, are needed to help ensure universal broadband is met with universal adoption.

“Every unserved home and business deserves a broadband connection, and this notice gives states a new path to find the locations the first round of BEAD missed. We support NTIA’s effort to true up the Federal Communications Commission’s maps and ensure funding follows the households and small businesses still waiting for service,” Prasad said in a statement. 

“Congress recognized that universal connectivity requires investment in both the physical and human infrastructure of broadband,” she said. “We look forward to learning how states will be able to use BEAD funds to connect apartment buildings and other multifamily housing where low-income residents live, and to support adoption efforts that turn a new connection into one people actually use. After so much delay, we urge NTIA to get Digital Equity Act funding flowing, so states and trusted partners have the resources to help people make meaningful use of the internet.”