Fiber vendors will keep on moving despite new BEAD rules

Fiber has officially taken the backseat now that the federal government rewrote the rules to the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. But the changes don’t mean much to the equipment vendors that have already moved on to greener pastures. The rural broadband hype has simmered down for vendors like Adtran, Corning, and CommScope, who are instead chasing gains in lucrative areas like long-haul fiber and data center connectivity. With BEAD deployments delayed until 2026 or beyond, vendors have even more reason to keep at those side hustles. “There is going to be a percentage of applicants in each state that don’t re-apply, because of the time and costs associated,” Dell’Oro Group VP Jeff Heynen said. That said, fiber vendors likely won’t lose out with their larger operator customers. Providers with the resources to reapply for BEAD will do so, he added, and will likely pick up broadband serviceable locations from the smaller providers that drop out.