55 of 56 final proposals are approved and $21 billion in savings is still waiting on guidance. Our national broadband director sat on the BEAD panel at ISE Expo in Nashville. Here's what she told the room, and what it means if you're sourcing a build.
As of August 2026, 55 of the 56 states and territories have approved BEAD final proposals. Illinois is the last one outstanding.
Along the way the program identified around $21 billion in savings against the original $42.5 billion, representing close to half. NTIA ran three listening sessions on where that money should go, then delayed its guidance in March to work through 188 written comments. At the time of writing it still hasn't landed.
Approvals are done. The biggest open question is what happens to half the money.
June 2025's policy overhaul replaced the fiber-first framework with a technology-neutral standard and reopened bidding in states that had already picked subgrantees.
Texas shows what came out of it. Allocated $3.3 billion, awarded $1.3 billion, still reaching 243,000 locations — roughly 123,000 on fiber, 54,000 on fixed wireless, 65,000 on low-earth-orbit satellite. Nevada landed at a 51/41/9 mix.
More sites, more variety, fewer route-miles of high-count fiber per dollar awarded. If you're supplying these builds, that's a different stocking picture than fiber-first would have produced.
We've felt that shift directly. "I've already placed orders for my customers for next year," our National Director of Broadband & Strategic Accounts, Andrea Wegley, told the BEAD panel at ISE Expo in Nashville this August. "I would never have had to do that in the past." Fiber isn't really bought by the foot anymore, she told the room: "It's not about how many feet - it's about how much glass you can actually allocate." And the sentiment running through the panel was that the AI and data center buildout is competing for that same glass.
It's why at Galloway, we hold backup stock on fiber projects and keep material in ten locations - so we can hotshot into a market in a couple of hours.
The friction in Build America, Buy America isn't compliance in the abstract. It's producing documented provenance for every line item when the bid closes Friday.
That part we can take off your desk. BABA-compliant sourcing and the documentation behind it are built into how we buy - not worked out mid-project.
Andrea joined the panel alongside Alex Gonzalez of Charter/Spectrum, Artur Filipek of Citi Connect Industries and Jason Rudin of Clad. The discussion ranged wider than BEAD - as the moderator put it, most of the room is now planning around every kind of funding, not one program. What kept coming back, from every seat on the panel: The builds that stay on schedule are the ones where operators, contractors and suppliers are planning together months before notice-to-proceed.
...And we'll come back with a materials list and the BABA documentation to go with it! Request a Quote · Call 1 (239) 481-7448