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  "description": "Resound also dropped out in the state.",
  "path": "/astound-explains-165-million-bead-refusal-in-texas/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-10T22:19:10.000Z",
  "site": "https://broadbandbreakfast.com",
  "tags": [
    "See Breakfast Club Membership Options!",
    "See Breakfast Club Membership Options",
    "manage to finalize",
    "out of Nebraska",
    "described refusing",
    "was dropping out",
    "corrective action plan"
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  "textContent": "WASHINGTON, June 10, 2026 – Astound Broadband walked away from about $165 million in federal broadband funding in Texas. The company said it did so because only part of its application was approved.\n\nAn Astound spokesperson said in an email that the company had submitted 33 applications during the state’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program bidding. Those applications were for specific project areas but constituted a single contiguous fiber route that would be out of Astound’s existing footprint.\n\nSee Breakfast Club Membership Options!\n\n\n                            See Breakfast Club Membership Options\n                        \n\nOnly five of those are approved, which would have left the company doing separate fiber builds far away from its existing footprint. That was “ultimately not financially feasible for the company,” the spokesperson wrote.\n\n“The five awarded counties were significantly remote from Astound's existing network, to where it became impossible to justify the expense or return on investment to build to these counties,” the spokesperson wrote.\n\nAstound’s awarded projects would have served more than 16,000 locations. In addition to Astound, Resound Networks, AMA Communications, and Thrive Broadband also appeared to have turned down awards.\n\nResound’s was the second largest of the four at $23 million for about 15,500 locations. The company did not respond to a request for comment on why it refused the award.\n\nTexas’s broadband office said in a release last week that it was working on finding other solutions for the 31,000 locations that now don’t have a BEAD winner committed to serving them. That’s about 13 percent of the state’s eligible locations.\n\nThe state did manage to finalize grant agreements with 17 ISPs covering the rest of its eligible homes and businesses, including SpaceX. The state said it was finalizing an agreement with a provider that appeared to be Amazon, based on the number of locations the company was in line for.\n\nSpaceX has told state broadband offices that satellite providers could need exemptions from certain BEAD rules in order to participate, something the Commerce Department shot down, but has so far reached deals with at least Texas and Nebraska.\n\nAmazon, the other satellite ISP participating in BEAD, pulled out of Nebraska, as did two local providers. The state said those decisions were “due to changes in their business plans” and that it would hold another bidding round for the 1,700 affected locations.\n\nOn a call with reporters last month, the heads of two electric cooperatives described refusing tentative BEAD grants in Colorado and Florida. That was because of Commerce Department rules around pole attachment deals for BEAD participants, plus the program’s domestic manufacturing requirements.\n\n**Doug Adams** , head of Broadband Marketers, reported for broadband.io that Resound was dropping out of four other states as well, including a $60 million grant in New Mexico. Adams pointed to a corrective action plan from May in which New Mexico questioned whether Resound was funneling money from another state program to a supplier owned by an employee.",
  "title": "Astound Explains $165 Million BEAD Refusal in Texas",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-12T21:47:07.301Z"
}