More broadband coming to SusqCo after PBDA BEAD grant finds approval

2-25-26

By Lauren Royce
Editor
TOWANDA — More broadband access is coming to Susquehanna County after the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced Feb. 9 that it approved the Final Proposal submitted by Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (PBDA) under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. This unlocks federal funding from the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) for the Commonwealth’s broadband infrastructure. The PBDA Final Plan will be sent to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as part of the notice of award preparation process. This approval leaves one final step to accessing the roughly $73.57 million applied for by Central Bradford Progress Authority (CPBA) to invest in high-speed internet to be delivered to 6,457 locations across six counties in Northern Pennsylvania, including Susquehanna, Bradford, Tioga, Lycoming,
Sullivan, and Wyoming Counties.
“NIST’s review within the framework of the BEAD law says that they have 20 days to review those plans, and then they approve them, and ultimately at that point, the Broadband Development Authority will issue contracts to the provisional awardees,” said Matt Williams, VP of community and economic development with the CBPA. “Then there’s a 30 to 60 day period under which we have the ability to review the contract, send it back to the state, they’ll agree to our changes or disagree, and then ultimately a contract will get executed.”
Williams said the total award for Susquehanna County was $6.4 million, intended to service 310 broadband service locations and nine Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs).
“That’s only a small portion of the total number that were available in Susquehanna County, because Claverack was one of the largest providers in Susquehanna (County),” Williams said. “Their total award for their whole footprint was roughly $9.8 million, and that included primarily Susquehanna and a small portion of Wyoming and a small portion of Bradford County.”
This comes after Pennsylvania recently received approval from the NTIA to deliver approximately $711 million in federal BEAD funding to bring reliable internet access to 129,000 unserved and underserved Pennsylvania locations currently without it.
Williams said that afterwards, broadband deployment would happen once a contract has been signed. Final funding release from NIST is expected in the next few weeks.
“The provisional awardees, once they have a signed contract, the way the program has been structured is they were required to agree to provide service within four years of the award date, and that includes all of the areas for which they receive provisional awards— The big award winners in Susquehanna County were the Progress Authority, Revolution Broadband, who’s a subarm of Claverack Electrical Co-op, and there was one portion in the Auburn Township area that was awarded to Frontier.”
Ongoing work in Susquehanna, specifically from Clavirac and from Frontier, is funded through different programs like the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) and Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP). The federal from the NTIA that was funding that was appropriated in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, bringing the national award to roughly $42 billion. Pennsylvania’s portion of that was $1.2 billion, intended to address remaining locations lacking broadband access.
According to a BEAD data table detailing provisional grant awards, Claverack’s 1,247 locations using fiber technology were approved for $9,046,250. The Auburn Township (area) is a broadband service area that was awarded to Frontier Communications, with 302 eligible locations in it. Combined with Claverach, that’s around 1,500 locations eligible for work to be done.
Williams said these funds are in addition to ongoing work through other federal programs like RDOF and BIP to expand broadband service, which are actively under construction today