[News] West Virginia sticks with fiber for BEAD

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West Virginia on Tuesday released its final BEAD proposal, which will award 99% of its funding to fiber providers, covering 94% of the state's 73,701 eligible locations.

The top funding recipients are local fiber provider Citynet ($229.2 million; 26,353 locations) and Frontier Communications ($209.3 million; 24,386 locations). Comcast followed, picking up $61.3 million for 5,493 locations.

The one non-fiber provider in the mix, SpaceX, was awarded $6.4 million to reach 4,241 locations (5.75% of the state's broadband serviceable locations) with its low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite service, Starlink. The state did not award any funding for fixed wireless access. See a full chart of West Virginia's preliminary BEAD winners below:

In total, the state awarded $625 million of its $1.2 billion in allocated BEAD funds for deployment. It remains to be seen what will happen with the leftover funding, as states are continuing to await guidance from NTIA on the use of non-deployment funds.

"This set of regional outcomes is within potential awardee capacity, reflects these considerations and risk mitigation strategies, supplies universal coverage of eligible locations, and demonstrates a technology-neutral approach prioritizing low-cost projects," states West Virginia's final proposal.

In a post on LinkedIn, Gigi Sohn, executive director for the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB), said the proposal makes "complete sense" for the state: "Congratulations to the West Virginia Office of Broadband for releasing a BEAD final proposal that makes complete sense for a state that has more mountainous land per square mile than any other and is the 3rd most heavily forested state. If you have ever tried to make a cellphone call anywhere in West Virginia, you can understand why the state awarded fiber 94% of eligible locations. The terrain demands it," said Sohn.

SpaceX complaint incoming?

West Virginia's final proposal is now open for public comment until 11:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday, August 26.

In the last week, SpaceX has filed public comments in response to both Virginia and Louisiana's fiber-focused final BEAD proposals, arguing that the states overlooked lower-cost LEO plans and demanding revisions or rejections of the states' proposals. It seems likely that SpaceX will do so in West Virginia as well, though it's unclear what impact those comments will have overall.

In a note for New Street Research on Wednesday analyzing West Virginia's BEAD results, analyst Vikash Harlalka pointed out that satellite has won funding for just 9% of locations from the three states that released results so far, but that it's too early to say if this will apply more broadly.

"After the change in rules which allowed satellite operators to compete for BEAD funding, we expected satellite to take a greater share of locations. Satellite has won only 9% of locations in the 3 states so far. This is probably lower than what most investors feared," he wrote. "However, we can't extrapolate these results to other states that may have a greater preference for satellite given the lower cost involved. SpaceX has challenged the proposals made by Virginia and Louisiana and we expect them to challenge the West Virginia results as well."

Comcast and SpaceX go three for three

As Harlalka also pointed out in his New Street Research note, both Comcast and SpaceX are the only providers to show up across all three states' winners lists so far. Comcast has so far picked up roughly $224 million for 36,397 locations; with SpaceX being awarded $17.4 million for 20,147 locations, according to Harlalka's analysis.

Comcast is currently the only cable provider to win BEAD funding, but Harlalka said he anticipates "Charter to show up in at least some of the other states' final proposals."

Harlalka also remarked that incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) are receiving less funding than anticipated (with the exception of Frontier in West Virginia), possibly getting beat out by satellite providers and in some cases, cable operators using HFC. Besides Frontier, ILECs including Brightspeed, Verizon and AT&T have picked up under $75 million combined across the three states' final proposals.

Fixed wireless providers have also won relatively little funding despite the Trump administration rewriting the program's rules as tech neutral.

All final BEAD proposals are due to the NTIA by September 4, and the agency has expressed its intent to approve proposals and release funds by the end of the year.