By Stephen Smoot, The Moorefield Examiner
MOOREFIELD, W.Va. — In 2023, United States Senator Joe Manchin made an announcement that seemed, at the time, game changing for West Virginians who still had no access to high speed internet.
“This is a historic announcement for the Mountain State and will benefit every West Virginian. . . . Today (we are) announcing more than $1.2 billion to finally ensure every home in West Virginia is connected to reliable broadband.”
When BEAD first rolled out, some concerns were shared by local West Virginia officials about the potentially prohibitive match requirement. That, however, turned out to be one of the less significant problems with it.
Called “Broadband Equity Access and Deployment,” the program came out of President Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act. A release by the Senator’s office gave Manchin significant credit for crafting it, stating Senator Manchin “created the $42.45 billion BEAD program within the NTIA. Senator Manchin authored the provision that allocates funding to each state based on its proportion of unserved areas in the updated FCC broadband coverage map, as well as additional funding for high-cost areas like West Virginia that are more difficult to serve.”
