The BEAD program includes $42 billion for high-speed Internet access. This federal grant program, funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act goal is to provide universal internet by funding partnerships between states or territories, communities, and stakeholders to build infrastructure where needed to and increase adoption of high-speed internet. BEAD prioritizes unserved locations that have no internet access or that only have access under 25/3 Mbps and underserved locations only have access under 100/20 Mbps.
The National Telecommunication Information and Administration allocated $451 million dollars in Kansas to address the digital divide. The Broadband Equity Access and Deployment 5–Year Action Plan along with Volume 1 and Volume 2 have identified served, unserved, and underserved locations across the state. The 5-Year Action Plan addresses the “what” KOBD will be doing, and Volume 1 and Volume 2 address the “how” it will happen and how KOBD will address the digital divide.
On June 6, the Trump Administration released an updated NTIA Policy Notice modifying elements of the BEAD program. The Kansas Office of Broadband Development is reviewing the notice and its implications for our state thoroughly. We will share further updates and guidance as soon as we are able. A link to the archived BEAD information is below. This page will continue to be updated, and we will continue to have industry calls and provide more information as it becomes available.
The Technical Project Application Portal will open at 2 p.m. on July 16 and close at 6 p.m. on July 30. Registration reopened on July 1, 2025, and will run concurrent with the application period.
Registrants are encouraged to use this guide to pre-register via the portal.
These forms must be used by registrants for required files that will be uploaded as part of the registration. Please refer to the Guide for instructions on filling out and renaming these files.
Registration curing requests will come from a Salesforce automated email address of “KDC SF NoReply <[email protected]>”. Emails will go to the Lead Project and Lead Technical Project contacts. If you have a question regarding your curing request, do not reply to that email. Email questions to the [email protected]v inbox and a team member will respond to you.
To maximize time for eligible applicants to participate in the BEAD subgrant selection process, KOBD will accept submitted registrations as sufficient to allow applicants to access the BEAD technical application portal. Please note, this does NOT suggest your registration has been accepted as being satisfactory. All applicants must have a successful registration to allow for their submitted technical application to be reviewed by KOBD. Unsuccessful registrations will result in it being returned for curing and technical applications submitted by the applicant cannot be reviewed until all registration curing has been satisfied.
Our Salesforce portal is limited to one unique user working within the Salesforce application. However, our Salesforce team has suggested the following workaround to allow multiple people to collaborate.
To collaborate on your BEAD registration and/or technical application simultaneously, you must be willing to share your login credentials for Salesforce with other people. Once you’ve shared your login information with one or more people, all of you may begin working on separate sections of the same application.
PLEASE NOTE: This workaround will not work if two or more people are attempting to work in the same section of the application. The solution only works if each contributor is working in different sections. Each person working on their specific section must save their progress to ensure that Salesforce registers the entries into the portal. To confirm that the progress of others is within the system, please refresh the page after you save your work (if that does not work, logging out and logging back in should reflect all the latest saved progress).
Our Salesforce portal is limited to one unique user working within the Salesforce application. However, our Salesforce team has suggested the following workaround to allow multiple people to collaborate.
To collaborate on your BEAD registration and/or technical application simultaneously, you must be willing to share your login credentials for Salesforce with other people. Once you’ve shared your login information with one or more people, all of you may begin working on separate sections of the same application.
PLEASE NOTE: This workaround will not work if two or more people are attempting to work in the same section of the application. The solution only works if each contributor is working in different sections. Each person working on their specific section must save their progress to ensure that Salesforce registers the entries into the portal. To confirm that the progress of others is within the system, please refresh the page after you save your work (if that does not work, logging out and logging back in should reflect all the latest saved progress).
KOBD has updated the approved NTIA bead eligible location list with the addition of a new eligibility field. This field will support applications as they are still required to account for the full location list approved by NTIA. This will address the changes in status over time and allow applicants to apply for locations in need of eligible service.
Location status: 0=unserved/eligible, 1=underserved/eligible, 2=served/funded/ineligible.
*Please note files with an *asterisk* will not open in Excel completely. Will require other software.
Applicants must account for ALL NTIA approved eligible locations (the 0s and 1s in the list) even if it is shown as “ineligible” in the KOBD eligibility field. There will be required fields within the technical application and within the location .csv file where locations flagged as newly ineligible will be recorded. BEAD dollars should not be requested for these newly ineligible locations.
Please note the Project Funding Areas did not change. The current broadband fabric was used to notate locations that no longer exist. KOBD continues to use all available and allowable information to support applicants.
The first round of BEAD pre-registration opened on May 13, 2024 and closed on December 20, 2024. The list reflected below indicates all applicants that have been reviewed and approved. Following a thorough review by the KOBD team, all applicants received notifications on their pre-qualification status, indicating whether their submission was approved, returned for curing, or disqualified. The following organizations successfully registered to participate in the BEAD program.
If you are on the list of BEAD Pre-Registered Applicants, you do not need to complete the BEAD: Benefit of the Bargain Pre-Registration process. Those who submitted, but did not complete registration before the June 6, 2025, Policy Notice may require curing.
In accordance with NTIA’s BEAD NOFO requirements, KOBD has updated internal communication policies to establish a ‘Quiet Period’ until the end of KOBD’s subgrantee selection process to comply with the BEAD NOFO.
Entities eligible to apply for BEAD such as internet service providers, municipalities, etc. with questions about BEAD programmatically including but not limited to verbal or electronic communications such as text, voice calls, emails, etc. will not be responded to unless they are emailed directly to [email protected] or brought up during a public BEAD office hour hosted by KOBD.
When emailing [email protected], eligible entities can expect a response to appear on KOBD’s website, www.kansascommerce.gov/bead as a new FAQ response under Resources if one does not already exist.
Questions posed during a public BEAD office hour hosted by KOBD can be directly responded to by KOBD staff during the office hour and responses will be posted on KOBD’s website as a new FAQ response if one does not already exist. No communications will be sent out with a direct response to a question either from KOBD staff or the [email protected] email address.
Please refer to the BEAD NOFO (page 35):
7. Subgrantee Selection Process
a. General Principles Governing Subgrantee Selection
i. Protecting the Integrity of the Selection Process
In establishing a fair, open, equitable, and competitive selection process, each Eligible Entity must ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to protect the integrity of the competition, including safeguards against collusion, bias, conflicts of interest, arbitrary decisions, and other factors that could undermine confidence in the process.
BEAD: Benefit of the Bargain Technical Application Webinar
KOBD continues to engage with industry and broadband partners via the Industry Roundtables.
The upcoming dates are July 24, August 7, August 21, September 4, September 18, October 2, October 16, October 30, November 13, November 27 and December 11. The 2025 Industry Roundtables will be every other Thursday at 10:30 a.m. Roundtables intend to provide a space to discuss and share updates from the Office of Broadband. Additionally, NTIA Federal Program Officer Melinda Stanley will occasionally be on to clarify program questions. The 2025 Industry Roundtables will be every other Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
To submit questions in advance or be added to the Industry Roundtable distribution list, please email [email protected].
Industry Roundtable Records are linked below:
Office Hours
KOBD will hold BEAD Office Hours to support applicants. Meeting link is the same as the Industry Roundtable Link.
In accordance with the Policy Notice issued by National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on June 6, 2025, locations served by Unlicensed Fixed Wireless Providers (ULFW) are now permitted to compete for Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) subgrants. Thus, to ensure locations already served by an ULFW service that meets the technical specifications of the BEAD Program are not included in awards for BEAD deployment projects, these locations are eligible for removal from BEAD consideration. Thus, the Kansas Office of Broadband Development (KOBD) have taken, and shall take, the following steps:
If an ULFW service provider successfully demonstrates compliance with the requirements outlined in the Policy Notice, those served BSLs will be ineligible for BEAD Program funding. Failure to respond to this notice, or to meet the specified requirements, will result in the locations remaining eligible for BEAD funding.
To report suspected fraud, waste or abuse contact the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General Office of Investigations.
For more information, please visit the Office of Inspector General with the Department of Commerce here.
Based on Initial Proposal Volume 1 Transparency Plan (page 15), KOBD will post publicly all submitted challenges and rebuttals publicly before final challenge determinations are made, with the following information:
KOBD will not publicly post any personally identifiable information (PII) or proprietary information, including subscriber names, street addresses or customer IP addresses. To ensure all PII is protected, KOBD will remove any PII from all challenges and rebuttals prior to posting. Also, guidance will be provided to all challengers on which information may be posted publicly. The following list encompasses all Challenges submitted, but not all submitted Challenges listed were approved to go to Rebuttal. Please find all submitted challenges available for download here.
KOBD received approval from the NTIA on our Initial Proposal Volume 1 and continues to move through the challenge process.
The official Challenge Process ran from NOON CT on Friday, December 15 until Sunday, January 14 at 5:00 p.m. CT.
The Four Phases of the Challenge Process:
Eligible Challenging Entities include:
Location Info:
Post Deduplication Process: KOBD will use the NTIA Toolkit and deduplicate our current state grant programs, LINC, BAG 3.0, and the federal Enhanced Alternative Connect America Cost Model (EACAM), that may be awarded and/or contracted during the Challenge Process. Enforceable Commitment Challenges for these program locations are not necessary.
License Reminder: Licenses are required when using the pre-populated templates of locational information from the challenge portal and will support submitting a challenge on many locations at once.
Eligible challenging entities (tribal/local government, nonprofits and internet service providers) can apply for licenses from CostQuest, at no cost. Learn more from this NTIA webpage here.
The official challenge process was outlined in Volume 1 of the Initial Proposal and required the process be transparent, evidence based and expedient.
| Challenge Process Overview | Volume 1 -Full Document |
| Acceptable Evidence | NTIA Document |
| Data Licenses | NTIA Webpage on CostQuest Licensing |
| Challenge Portal Guidelines | KOBD Challenge Portal Guideline Document |
| Challenge Portal – Website | Challenge Portal – Website |
Below you will find links to webinars KOBD hosted along with information on upcoming webinars.
“My administration is committed to ensuring every Kansan, regardless of their zip code, has access to fast and
Governor Laura Kelly
reliable internet connectivity, bringing additional economic growth, educational opportunities, and telehealth
services. This funding advances our progress toward being a top 10 state for broadband access by 2030.”
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