West Virginia has heavily favored fiber over other broadband technologies, as the state revealed its BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) funding proposals.

In doing so, the state becomes the third to prioritize funding for fiber broadband rollouts after Virginia and Louisiana released their respective proposals.

In total, 99 percent of West Virginia's funding will be awarded to fiber providers, which is set to cover 94 percent of the state's 73,701 eligible locations.

BEAD, which was set up by the Biden administration and confirmed by Congress in November 2021, has been implemented by the NTIA. The federal grant program was designed to fund projects dedicated to providing Internet infrastructure in unserved locations across the US and its territories.

However, after much criticism of the $42.5 billion program, President Trump reworked the program earlier this year.

The initial purpose of BEAD was to push the rollout of fiber across the US, but reforms made in June have put this on equal footing with other technologies, such as satellites.

West Virginia has opted to instead focus on fiber companies, awarding Citynet the highest funding from its allocation, with $229.2 million awarded to the ISP.

Frontier was the second-biggest winner, with $209.2m, followed by Comcast, which was awarded $61.2m.

SpaceX overlooked again

In contrast, Elon Musk's SpaceX was awarded $6.4m to provide LEO services in the state for 4,241 locations.

Last week, SpaceX slammed the funding allocations in Virginia and Louisiana, stating that fiber was being prioritized.

In Virginia, SpaceX was hoping to secure $60m in grant money, but is now only on course for around $3m. Louisiana has awarded $7.7m to SpaceX for 10,327 of the 127,000 plus locations.

“Simply put, Virginia has put its heavy thumb on the scale in favor of expensive, slow-to-build fiber bias over speedy, low-cost, and technology-neutral competition,” the company told the state’s government.

“Virginia must immediately revise its final proposal to appropriately consider applications received in line with program rules."

The NTIA is set to review the proposals before approval. BEAD has been highly controversial. So far, the program has yet to connect a single household to broadband.

Only three states, Louisiana, Delaware, and Nevada, had received approval to get on with their broadband buildout, prior to the reform of the program in June.