Broadband consulting firm Vernonburg Group estimates about 900,000 locations still qualify for funding under an upcoming cleanup round of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program — at an additional cost of $5.3 billion.

The firm published the figures on Thursday, October 15, 2026. The count covers locations that would qualify for what the industry calls the BEAD "true-up" round, the follow-on phase designed to pick up unserved and underserved premises left behind after the main allocation awards.

What does the estimate change?

For operators and ISPs, the number sets the scale of the next commercial opportunity. Nine hundred thousand locations is a material market. At $5.3 billion in extra deployment costs, the implied subsidy averages roughly $5,900 per location — a per-location frame that matters for any bidder modeling returns on the final round.

The estimate also signals that the flagship federal grant program has more work to do to close the digital divide, as Vernonburg itself framed it. This is another independent analysis reaching that conclusion, not a vendor marketing claim. No operator result or vendor contract sits behind the figure; it is consultant arithmetic applied to program data.

What is the true-up round?

BEAD, administered under the Commerce Department's broadband apparatus, allocates grants state by state. The true-up mechanism exists because initial rounds routinely leave gaps: locations that lost a chosen provider, locations reclassified as unserved, and locations where original bidders failed. The upcoming round will reopen funding for those premises.

Vernonburg's blog post, titled on the question of how much funding is needed to connect all remaining unserved and underserved locations, walks through that arithmetic. The $5.3 billion figure is its answer for the extra deployment cost on top of what earlier rounds have already committed.

Why the numbers matter now

The timing is the point. Vernonburg said the true-up round "will kick off soon," which puts the 900,000-location count in front of state broadband offices and prospective bidders just as they plan allocations and bid strategies.

For state administrators, the estimate offers a planning benchmark: how much demand to expect when the window opens, and whether remaining federal money covers the $5.3 billion gap or whether states must find supplementary sources.

For carriers, the arithmetic is straightforward. Roughly $5,900 per location, before any state matching requirements or cost-share rules, defines the ceiling on what a build can cost and still clear the program's thresholds. Locations above that cost line will test whether the round funds them at all.

The commercial reality check

Consulting estimates of this kind have a mixed record, and Vernonburg's figure will face scrutiny against actual state-by-state location lists when the true-up round formally opens. The gap between 900,000 estimated locations and the final certified count will determine whether $5.3 billion holds as the working number or moves.

What is not in dispute is the direction. Multiple analyses now converge on the same conclusion: the first BEAD allocation rounds did not finish the job, and a six-figure location count remains unfunded. The program's headline goal — universal deployment — still has a measurable distance left to travel.

Vernonburg expects the true-up round to begin shortly, which means states and bidders should see the formal location lists and funding terms within the coming months rather than years.