Jul. 29 at 2:51 PM
$CLFD For three years, the story of American broadband funding has been a federal story. The
$42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program dwarfed every prior connectivity effort. The money is, at last, moving toward construction.The reasonable assumption for anyone watching this unfold was that BEAD would finish the job: that the combination of federal dollars, state matching funds, and provider capital would reach essentially every unserved home and business in the country.
Wisconsin's Public Service Commission (PSC) does not believe that assumption. On May 19, 2026, Governor Tony Evers and the PSC opened a
$60 million State Broadband Expansion Grant round with a blunt premise: even after BEAD-funded deployments are complete, roughly 30,000 locations in Wisconsin will still lack service. The state is putting its own money on the table to reach them.
https://grantedai.com/blog/wisconsin-state-broadband-expansion-grant-60-million-july-27-deadline-30000-unserved-locations-bead-gap-universal-service-fund-strategy-2026
