Over $42 billion in aid will be spread across the United States to expand broadband access, President Joe Biden said Monday.
As part of the Biden administration’s goal to connect everyone to “reliable, affordable high-speed internet by the end of the decade,” the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program will allocate the funding among the states, territories and Washington, DC, according to a press release.
At minimum, territories will get $27 million and states $107 million, up to a maximum of $3.3 billion. Each award is listed in a separate press release. “Put simply, high-speed internet is a necessity in today’s society,” said Mitch Landrieu, White House infrastructure coordinator and senior adviser to the president.
The administration noted that 8.5 million households and small businesses are located in areas without access to high-speed internet, which is around how many are listed on the Federal Communications Commission’s new maps showing connectivity gaps around the US. The FCC had released its first versions of the revamped maps in November, which swapped out the large census blocks used in previous versions to drill down to show whether 114 million individual homes and businesses actually have connectivity.
The $42 billion in funding to deploy high-speed internet in areas without it comes from the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Act signed into law in November.
In areas where broadband is already available, an additional $14.2 billion from the Infrastructure Act is planned to create a permanent $30-a-month subsidy program to make high-speed internet more affordable for low-income people. Other assorted funds include $2.75 billion for digital equity and inclusion efforts, which could help end digital redlining that’s kept ISPs from servicing low-income areas with fast internet, as well as $2 billion for Indigenous governments and organizations and $2 billion in grants and loans to build internet infrastructure in rural areas.
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