News

Illinois and California continue to remain the only two states not to receive approval from the feds for their statewide broadband proposal.

By Brad Randall, Broadband Communities

Illinois and California remain blocked from accessing billions of dollars in federal funding for broadband deployment.

Both states are the only ones remaining that have yet to receive federal approval for their plans under the restructured $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, according to the NTIA’s BEAD dashboard tracker.

As has been reported by other publications, the freezes are heavily tied to a White House executive order directing the agency to evaluate whether infrastructure funds should be withheld from states implementing strict local artificial intelligence regulations.

California and Illinois have both been considered leaders in statewide AI regulatory efforts.

The prolonged administrative bottleneck has drawn fierce pushback in both states.

In a pointed formal demand to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker warned back in May that the delay has frozen 232 local construction projects, leaving 383,000 residents disconnected while supply chain inflation actively drives up infrastructure costs. Concurrently, California regulators are entirely bypassing the federal standoff by leveraging independent state-level accounts to greenlight robust, expensive rural fiber networks that openly defy the federal push for cheaper, short-term satellite fixes.

Get this news in your inbox. Subscribe to the Broadband Communities newsletter!