For years, reliable high-speed internet has remained out of reach for thousands of rural Hoosiers.
Students have struggled to complete homework online, pressuring parents to drive them to fast-food parking lots for internet access. Businesses have relied on slow or unreliable connections, often snarling sales and product deliveries.
Senior citizens have been forced to drive long distances for doctor appointments when a telehealth visit might have sufficed. Families looking to move to rural communities have crossed towns off their lists because broadband simply wasn’t available.
Now, after years of planning, a change in presidential administrations and months of additional federal delays, Indiana is preparing to roll out its share of a program that state officials say will close those internet service gaps and become the largest government-supported expansion of rural broadband infrastructure in state history.
The federally funded Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, better known as BEAD and first approved by Congress in 2021, is expected to bring high-speed internet service to about 123,000 Indiana homes and businesses that currently have inadequate internet or no service at all.
Projects will reach locations in 91 of Indiana’s 92 counties, with the greatest concentration in rural communities where low population density and difficult terrain have long discouraged private investment. Only Fulton County, about 45 miles south of South Bend, will be untouched because no households or businesses were identified as being eligible for BEAD.
The aim is to provide rural customers with internet speeds of at least 100 megabits per second for downloading and 20 mbps for uploading — essentially enough to stream multiple videos or hold multiple video calls simultaneously. But speeds will be much higher for most projects.
Some work is slated to begin this summer. All projects must be completed within four years, though many are expected to be finished much sooner, said Megan Minor, Indiana’s chief broadband officer.
The program also comes with an unexpected twist.
Although Indiana was initially awarded roughly $868 million from the federal government for broadband expansion, the state now expects to dole out just over $483 million in grants to build the network.
That’s, in part, due to new Trump administration rules that allow for lower-cost alternatives and an increase in private broadband expansion that occurred in Indiana while the program was being developed.
Still, the $483 million for grants in Indiana will be matched by $373 million from local service providers, for a total investment of about $856 million across the state.
“I just really think it can be a game changer across the board, opening up opportunities for both individuals and for communities as a whole,” Minor said.
The first beneficiaries
Customers of Decatur County REMC in southeastern Indiana are expected to be among the first Hoosiers to see the benefits of Indiana’s BEAD expansion.
In late June, the Greensburg-based electric cooperative became the first of the state’s 24 BEAD grant awardees to sign its contract with the Indiana Broadband Office, clearing the way for construction to begin within weeks.
CEO Brett Abplanalp said the cooperative expects to complete most of the work by the end of the year.
The $7.1 million BEAD award and a local match will extend fiber service to roughly 2,800 additional homes and businesses, primarily in sparsely populated areas surrounding Greensburg and the small communities of Napoleon, Millhousen, St. Paul and other rural pockets of Decatur County.
Those are the places private providers historically bypassed because too few customers lived along each mile of line to make the investment profitable.
For Decatur County REMC, the project builds directly on an earlier investment through Indiana’s Next Level Connections broadband program, which awarded the cooperative about $4.6 million to reach roughly 1,400 locations, including about 565 that previously had no broadband service.
From 2019 to 2024, the Next Level program awarded a total of $328 million across 88 counties to provide broadband access to more than 102,000 homes and commercial locations.
Abplanalp said the earlier state-funded expansion already has demonstrated how reliable internet can reshape a rural economy.
He recalled one salvage yard owner whose inventory system, credit-card processing and phone service routinely failed because the business relied on an unreliable wireless connection. With fiber service, those disruptions disappeared.
He also pointed to studies suggesting fiber access can add thousands of dollars to rural home values.
Real estate agents, he said, increasingly view broadband as essential infrastructure, on par with electricity, water and sewer service, for attracting new residents and businesses.
“I feel like if you’re not a connected community in the future, you’re going to have a hard time with population growth,” Abplanalp said.
Theresa Abney in tiny Burns City said she has no doubt high-speed internet will ease and possibly elevate the operation of her dog grooming and boarding business near the Crane Naval Support Activity base in Martin County.
“I need the internet to communicate and make arrangements with my customers,” Abney said. “Right now, I have to rely on my cellphone for internet and that can be kind of spotty.”
Abney is among about 1,300 households and businesses in Martin and Daviess counties expected to get high-speed fiber internet through a $3 million BEAD grant slated for locally owned RTC Communications, the longtime rural telephone provider for the region.
The company said construction is expected to begin late this year or in early 2027, pending full execution of a grant agreement with the state.
Abney said the 58 families in Burns City now often have to drive 10 to 12 miles to a neighboring town to gain access to high-speed internet at the library or a McDonald’s so children can finish their online homework.
“We’re not going to know what to do to have decent internet,” Abney said. “Everybody’s looking forward to it coming this way.”
Many twists and turns
The long-awaited construction marks the beginning of the final phase of a program that has undergone repeated revisions since Congress created the $42.45 billion national BEAD initiative as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Nationally, the program is expected to connect nearly 5 million homes, businesses and community institutions to high-speed internet.
But reaching this point required states to navigate years of mapping, provider selection and federal review before a major overhaul ordered by the Trump administration forced them to revisit much of their work.
Indiana believed it was nearing the finish line early in 2025.
Under the original federal rules adopted during the Biden administration, the state had completed its first round of provider selections and made preliminary awards to companies that prioritized fiber-optic technology over other options.
Then the rules changed.
In June 2025, the Trump administration issued new guidance requiring states to reopen portions of the competitive process under what became known as the “Benefit of the Bargain” round. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick argued that the original program favored fiber technology, imposed unnecessary regulations and had failed to connect households quickly enough.
The revised policy shifted the program to a technology-neutral, lowest-cost model, allowing fiber, fixed wireless and low-Earth-orbit satellite providers to compete on equal footing. The changes were widely viewed as improving the competitive position of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service, which analysts projected could receive billions of dollars more in BEAD funding than under the original rules.
The administration also eliminated several Biden-era requirements, including provisions encouraging providers to offer low-cost broadband plans, consider labor and climate factors and work with underserved communities.
Supporters argued the changes would reduce red tape and stretch taxpayer dollars further, while critics said they would slow deployment and widen the digital divide.
Indiana, like every other state, had little choice but to adapt.
“We had to redo those awards,” Minor said, describing months of additional work with providers before submitting revised recommendations to federal officials.
The state ultimately received the necessary federal approvals in late 2025, clearing the way for contracts to be signed with grant awardees this summer.
Indiana, like many other states, is now awaiting guidance from the Trump administration on how the leftover BEAD money will be used.
State Rep. Ed Soliday, a Valparaiso Republican and longtime broadband expansion advocate, said the state finally appears to be emerging from years of planning, rule changes and competition between electric cooperatives and telecommunications companies.
“In talking to cable companies, I think we’re in pretty good shape,” he said.
Soliday cautioned, however, that the work is far from over. He said the state still must finalize contracts with the grant awardees, ensure they complete their projects on schedule and hold them accountable for the proper use of public dollars.
National broadband experts also caution that construction itself may prove to be the next challenge.
The Pew Charitable Trusts says states across the country will compete for construction materials, skilled workers and utility-pole access while navigating hundreds of local, state and federal permitting requirements.
Those factors could affect both project costs and completion schedules.
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Greg Weaver is an FPI News freelance contributor. You can reach him at gregoryeweaver@gmail.com.
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