In a visit to Bedford County on Tuesday, the White House official overseeing broadband deployment announced that all 56 state and territory contracts have been signed to implement the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program.
That effort, BEAD for short, is likely the last of the major federal funding initiatives that will foster internet access nationwide.
“We’re now on track to connect every unserved American identified by the BEAD program and close the digital divide once and for all,” said Arielle Roth, assistant commerce secretary for communications and information.
Roth, who heads the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, joined U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem; Virginia Office of Broadband Director Chandler Vaughan; and others at the Moneta farm of Bedford County Supervisor Edgar Tuck, a longtime connectivity proponent.
The commonwealth will receive at least $613 million to connect locations under BEAD. Vaughan said that BEAD will fund connections to 85,000 homes and businesses via fiber-optic, cable, satellite and wireless systems. Virginia has already completed broadband construction to 250,000 locations, much of it from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan act, or ARPA.
President Joe Biden signed both BEAD and ARPA into law, but when the Trump administration came back to Washington, it criticized BEAD’s slow implementation and had states rewrite their plans with an emphasis on saving money.
Roth, while touting broadband deployment into rural communities like Tuck’s, echoed previous criticisms.
“BEAD was signed into law almost five years ago, but American households, farms, and businesses were left waiting … as the prior administration slowed the program’s execution and scared away providers through burdensome rules and unlawful technology restrictions,” she said. “That was a costly mistake.”
Among speakers at the gathering was Rodney Gray, chief operating officer of Bedford-based internet provider ZiTel. The company, which has built out broadband in multiple states during the ARPA era, has been approved for BEAD money that will cover projects in Bedford, Roanoke, Augusta, Rockbridge, Galax, Grayson, Carroll, Culpeper and Franklin counties, Gray said.
As he showed the group a piece of heavy machinery called a vibratory plow, used to bury fiber underground to reach users, and explained some of his company’s processes, Gray said he agreed that things had been moving too slowly.
“The reforms at the federal level were amazing,” Gray said. “I don’t want to get political, but we really didn’t think BEAD was going to happen before Arielle got here.”
Evan Feinman, a Lynchburg native who ran the $42 million BEAD program for the Biden administration, said in a 2025 interview that such complaints were “largely unfair.” The program was designed to use an FCC connectivity map, which wasn’t finished until about 18 months after BEAD became law. Then, the states had to design their own programs based on their own needs, which required administration approval, a three-year process.
“The design of the program is why the program will be successful but also is why the program took longer,” the Richmond-based Feinman said at the time. “It’s relatively easy to run a top-down [effort], no engagement with the community, no engagement with the state.”
