Nebraska’s Vistabeam Turns on BEAD Connection

WASHINGTON, May 14, 2026 – President Joe Biden signed a major broadband deployment funding law on Nov. 15, 2021. Four and a half years later, the law just connected the first customer to high-speed Internet access.

That honor belongs to Nebraska fixed wireless provider Vistabeam, which turned on the first active subscriber connected by the $42.45 billion broadband grant program, the company said Thursday.

The company used Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment funding to upgrade three radios near Ogallala, Neb., that can serve 93 homes and businesses. That work was done days after the project cleared environmental reviews, the company said in a release.

“Congratulations to Nebraska on this impressive accomplishment and for demonstrating what an efficient, technology-neutral BEAD program can achieve,” Arielle Roth , head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which manages BEAD, said in a statement.

Roth and Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen , a Republican, visited the connected house and the tower providing it service Thursday.

The BEAD program was first signed into law more than four years ago. Projects like Vistabeams’s are just beginning to break ground, with most states in the process of hammering out final contracts with grant winners.

Throughout Nebraska, Vistabeam was awarded about $16.8 million to connect about 7,400 locations, according to preliminary data posted by the state’s broadband office.

"People in rural areas have waited a long time for this. We’re energized by the outcome and feel lucky to be a part of the solution,” Matt Larsen , CEO of Vistabeam, said in a statement.

There’s been something of a race to hit first-ever milestones as projects begin to get underway. Louisiana’s broadband office announced just Wednesday that Nextlink, another fixed wireless provider, had deployed a BEAD-funded radio on May 1, which it said was the first time BEAD equipment was live in the field. The gear didn’t have an active subscriber on it, but it was available for customers once they signed up.

In the years after the Infrastructure Law was signed, the Federal Communications Commission created a new nationwide broadband coverage map used to make state-by-state funding allocations and state broadband offices, many spun up to implement BEAD, refined those maps and solicited bids from ISPs.

Many states held a second round of bidding after the Trump administration updated BEAD’s rules to favor fiber less, and final results of those bidding rounds began receiving approval from NTIA last year.

The agency’s goal was to remove the programs’ preference for fiber and push deployment costs down, which it did. About half of the program’s budget won’t be used on deployment projects. Guidance on how states can spend the remaining money is forthcoming from NTIA.

About 12 percent of BEAD’s roughly 4 million locations will receive fixed wireless connections, according to a Connected Nation count. Another nearly 23 percent will get satellite.

Vistabeam said in a release that the Ogallala connection is getting speeds of 800 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 200 Mbps upload. It’s using equipment from WAV and Tarana Wireless, which makes radios that help provide faster fixed wireless broadband speeds.

The ISP also received BEAD funding in Colorado and Wyoming.