I'm not sure BEAD is needed, as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded the definition of Universal Service to include high-speed internet. The FCC later se

I'm not sure BEAD is needed, as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded the definition of Universal Service to include high-speed internet. The FCC later set up the Connect America Fund in 2013 to administer this, defining high speed as 10/1 broadband. https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service https://www.fcc.gov/general/connect-america-fund-caf https://www.fcc.gov/general/connect-america-fund-caf A friend is served by a rural cooperative telco and has fiber to the home. They were able to get grants from the Connect America Fund to run fiber in their service area, so I think it's been a success. It may be that there are other rural telcos who don't know they can do this, or are just bad at writing grant requests. And BEAD won't help solve that.