- Now that BEAD is moving along, Vistabeam is thinking about contracts and the grant reimbursement timeline
- CEO Matt Larsen told Fierce he’s somewhat concerned about BEAD opex
- He thinks FWA deployments can move fast – as long as there’s no equipment shortage
As NTIA begins to get the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program off the ground, it’s now up to the ISPs to nail down their contracts with states and ensure there’s enough cash on hand to complete builds, according to Vistabeam CEO Matt Larsen.
From an outsider’s perspective, “it looks like we’re just getting millions of dollars to go out and do this, but we have to put out more than that to go out and get these projects started and actually get them built,” he told Fierce at Broadband Nation Expo last week.
A big part of getting BEAD projects in order is to have “a really good understanding of what the reimbursement schedules are.” Generally, subgrantees receive a certain amount of BEAD funding after meeting specific buildout milestones, but the exact schedule and reimbursement amount depends on the state and project.
“That determines the maximum amount of financing we have at any given time,” Larsen said. “The states seem like they all have kind of a different setup on that, so I’m curious to see how that works.”
If states were able to – in some instances – dole out a portion of grant money upfront to ISPs, that would be “very helpful from a construction point of view, because that gives us the time to do the design and kind of start lining up materials,” he said.
Vistabeam, which primarily deploys fixed wireless but started building fiber in the last few years, has provisional BEAD awards in three states – Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming – said Larsen.
Since Wyoming was one of the states that got NTIA approval, “we’re getting ready to start negotiating contracts and I hope we can start doing some work very soon,” he said, noting Vistabeam already has some example contracts lined up but that it’s “probably going to have some things that we want to have changed.”
Larsen did add he has “a little bit of concern” about operating expenses, as NTIA wants ISPs to agree not to take any other federal subsidies for BEAD project areas.
For Vistabeam’s part, the company hasn’t “typically been accepting government subsidies on a regular basis anyway” for FWA. Opex for fiber meanwhile can build up when ISPs have to do locates and repairs, he said.
These BEAD projects will take about 4-5 years to complete, so “a lot can happen,” said Larsen. “After that time, we’ll deal with it then.”
Concerns about BEAD FWA supply chain
On the FWA side, while it’ll likely be quicker to deploy than fiber, he noted he’s concerned about potential equipment shortages, echoing what CommScope and Aristotle Unified Communications execs have said about BEAD hurdles.
All of Vistabeam’s FWA components come from Tarana, Larsen pointed out. “I’ve been assured by people in Tarana that they’re not going to have a problem with supply. I hope they can meet that.”
“It’s kind of hard when you have a single-source supplier like that,” he said. “So there is some risk there, but I think they’ve ramped up [on supply].”