BEAD Will Remain, State Broadband Officials Predict
The broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program will likely survive despite speculation the next Congress will seek to claw back money from the $42.5 billion initiative (see 2410210043), state broadband officials said Wednesday during a Broadband Breakfast webinar. Some also speculated that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s role in President-elect Donald Trump's administration will mean a shift in BEAD away from a focus on fiber over other ways of reaching consumers (see 2411080033).
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Broadband deployment “has bipartisan support and I don’t see BEAD going away,” said Brandy Reitter, executive director of the Colorado Broadband Office. “Maybe ... there could be some changes [for BEAD] in the new administration,” she added.
Reitter said BEAD “has broad support” and many members of Congress who voted for creation of it are still in office. A lot of states were making grants before BEAD was created and “I don’t see losing that … momentum or that momentum changing.”
BEAD won’t “disappear” when the Trump administration begins, given support for broadband connectivity, predicted Joseph Le, interim director-broadband development in the Kansas Department of Commerce. Most changes will likely be relatively minor, Le said. Kansas “is going to continue to move forward” following current guidance on the program. “I don’t foresee major changes” because “all 56 states and territories have been working diligently to implement BEAD.”
Every state and territory that broadband platform Ready.net works with “has the mindset of 'How quickly can we move?'” said Earnie Holtrey, director-state and local government partnerships. The majority of BEAD guidance is “codified in law” and is unlikely to quickly change, he said. “Affordability” is in the law, but how NTIA interprets that term could change in the new administration, he predicted. Similar changes appear possible, Holtrey added.
“This train is moving -- I wouldn’t expect a lot of changes,” Holtrey said. Most of the states and territories are set to file final plans at NTIA right around the time the new Trump administration takes office.
Le said the federal list of broadband serviceable locations (BSL) will never be “100% accurate.” It’s “a dynamic list that continues to evolve.”
“We have to use this opportunity to perfect our maps” and removing non-BSL “is an opportunity to do that,” Reitter said. “We’re constantly perfecting our map, changing our maps with every grant cycle.” The BSL list isn’t perfect and never will be, she added.
Reitter predicted that while many states will have an excess of BEAD dollars, Western states will not. “It’s really expensive -- in the Western states we have some really challenging topography.”
Le said he doesn’t have a complete picture of applications to serve Kansas. He estimated that 75% of projects will be fiber-based but said that’s based on previous grant programs. About 97% of the 52,000 unserved locations in the state are designated as rural and will be expensive to serve, so the percentage of fiber projects may be lower than projected, he said. A lot of states won’t reach 100% coverage using fiber because of costs, he said.