Clock Ticking: 20 States, Territories Filed BEAD Initial Plan

With less than a week before NTIA's Dec. 27 deadline, fewer than half of states and territories have submitted their full initial plan for the broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program, according to the agency's Wednesday update to its BEAD progress dashboard. NTIA said 20 entities filed both volumes of their initial plan, 10 more than the agency reported last Friday. So far, the agency has received just the first volume from 15 states and territories. It hasn’t received either volume from 21 others, though they all released drafts of both volumes. The NTIA update didn’t include New Jersey, where the Board of Public Utilities on Wednesday cleared staff to submit both volumes (see 2312200064). Louisiana last week became the first state to get full NTIA approval for its initial proposal (see 2312150047).