Michael Santorelli

Since June 6, when the Trump NTIA released its BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice (RPN), states have been racing to update their maps of eligible locations, conduct a new “Benefit of the Bargain” (BOTB) round, negotiate with prospective subgrantees, release

When Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in late 2021, inflation was still “transitory,” interest rates were near zero, and tens of millions of Americans lacked access to high-speed internet. Lawmakers warned that only a massive federal investment could close the digital divide.

As detailed in updated guidance issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in June, states have been racing to update their maps of eligible unserved and underserved locations ahead of the mandatory “Benefit of the Bargain” round for awarding Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment grants. This has required states to refine their maps to reflect:

The current total of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program-eligible locations is far lower than when the National Telecommunications and Information Administration first calculated BEAD funding allocations back in June 2023. While exact eligible locations lists are still subject to change as state broadband offices scramble to incorporate the “benefit of the bargain round," the number of eligible locations is lower—and in many cases, significantly so—than when BEAD funds were divvied up. This dramatic decrease in eligible locations will likely manifest in leftover deployment fund

Plain old telephone service has been dying a slow death in the US since the turn of the century. For much of the 20^th century, almost every American household used only POTS to make a phone call. Now, only 1.3 percent of households rely on POTS to do so. What happened?

 A public-private partnership (PPP) that uses public resources (e.g., grant funds) to leverage the expertise of private firms (e.g., established ISPs) is the most effective way to extend broadband networks into unserved and underserved areas. Across the country, states are increasingly relying on PPPs with incumbent ISPs to close digital divides and will likely continue to do so as BEAD funds are doled out. PPPs are governed by contracts, allowing parties to ensure that priorities, timelines, budgets, and other parameters of a project are memorialized and legally protected.

The Trump administration has an opportunity to unshackle the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program from bureaucratic micromanagement and turbocharge investment of these funds in new broadband networks. Doing so will help to efficiently and quickly close the United States’s digital divide, which has lingered for decades and disproportionately impacted rural households.

Is broadband service in the U.S. affordable? This question has dominated public discourse in recent years as policymakers have focused on, and allocated significant resources towards, closing the country’s digital divide once and for all. But determining the “affordability” of something is highly subjective and thus not amenable to a neat one-size-fits-all definition arrived at by central planners.