You’re reading the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society’s Weekly Digest, a recap of the biggest (or most overlooked) broadband stories of the week. The digest is delivered via e-mail each Friday.

Round-Up for the Week of June 1-5, 2026

One year ago, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick kicked off the Trump administration’s fundamental restructuring of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Speaking before Congress, Sec. Lutnick touted the new direction as cost-cutting and “tech-neutral” and promised to expedite the program so that all funds would be distributed by the end of 2025. 

Yet today, five months after Sec. Lutnick’s deadline, the Administration's performance falls short of its promises.  Some states are still awaiting approval of their plans. Less than half of the BEAD funds have been released. And all the states are waiting on NTIA to release guidance on how they can use the other half of their funding. 

What the BEAD restructuring has really delivered so far is that fewer households will receive the kind of broadband service Congress had intended. Before June 2025, states had been encouraged to invest in networks capable of meeting community connectivity needs for decades to come. The revised rules pushed states towards the lowest-cost option available. The result is fewer fiber network deployments and greater reliance on technologies that may be cheaper upfront but offer lower capacity, lower reliability, and have shorter lifespans.
 
A program meant to make a generational investment in America’s digital infrastructure became an exercise in minimizing near-term costs. 

Sec. Lutnick described the restructuring as “tech neutral,” but infrastructure decisions are never neutral. Our choices embed our values. Over the past year, the federal government made choices that will shape who gets robust, low-latency connections capable of supporting telehealth, remote work, online learning, and myriad future applications and who gets a connection that merely meets a minimum threshold on paper. 

The restructuring also undermined another core goal of the BEAD program—to ensure that people could afford to connect to the networks being built with taxpayer support. States worked with ISPs to craft low-cost plans that could deliver for low-income households. But Lutnick’s NTIA swept those provisions aside, characterizing them as rate regulation rather than consumer protection or common-sense accountability for public dollars.

Moreover, last June, NTIA hit the brakes on any plans to use BEAD funding for network-enabling purposes, such as broadband adoption efforts, affordable internet-enabled devices, and workforce training. States were told new guidance would be forthcoming. They’re still waiting. What we do know is that these funds may be conditioned on whether a state has what the Administration considers “onerous” AI laws. Once again, we have no insight into what onerous AI laws may be. We also don’t know why a state’s approach to artificial intelligence should have any bearing on funds Congress appropriated to expand broadband access and adoption. 

The restructuring and the delays have also weakened one of the most important decisions Congress took in designing the BEAD Program—putting states in the driver’s seat. BEAD was built on the recognition that previous federal programs were not responsive enough to local conditions. Under the original BEAD, states were empowered to assess needs, design programs, select projects, negotiate with providers, and hold them accountable for delivering results. But by changing rules and requiring states to redo previous decisions, the Administration has chipped away at that approach. NTIA has made states less like partners and more like contractors waiting for instructions.  

NTIA insisted it was “restoring integrity” to the program; what we got instead was shifting goal posts, improvising rules, and watering down the real purpose for which funds were appropriated. These are not the hallmarks of an efficient government program being run with integrity. The discussion is about more than what technology we choose and where we put it—it is about who can afford it and who can use it.

Unfortunately, the truths millions of Americans face are:

• Broadband networks still don’t reach everyone.
• The broadband networks that reach people aren’t all equal. Some technologies simply can’t offer the capacity and reliability of fiber networks.
• Not everyone can afford broadband services. 
• Not everyone has the skills to use the internet. 

The first anniversary is traditionally the paper anniversary, and there’s been plenty of paperwork here. But the question we want to ask is not simply whether BEAD is moving faster or slower than promised. The most important question is whether it is still pursuing the same goal: meaningful, universal connectivity. 

A broadband program that reaches fewer households, delivers lower-quality connections, waters down affordability provisions, and delays adoption programs may create more “served locations” on paper, but doesn’t deliver the connectivity we need. 

Dr. Revati Prasad is the Executive Director of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

Quick Bits

• Private Investment Is Amplifying BEAD’s Public Broadband Dollars
• Agenda for the FCC's June Open Meeting
• FCC Kicks Off First Spectrum Auction in Four Years
• Southern land-grant universities strengthen rural connectivity

Weekend Reads

• The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation
• Advancing Digital Inclusion Program Sustainability Through Data Collection and Evaluation
• AI Diffusion in the United States
• 2026 The Impact of AI on Learning Assessment Report

ICYMI from Benton

• E-Rate and Children's Screen Time
• Supreme Court Backs FCC Enforcement Authority
• Cybersecurity and Frontier Models: Inside Trump's Latest AI Executive Order
• OMB Proposes Changes to Federal Grant Administration—How Will They Impact Federal Broadband Funding?
• Rent the Internet
• DoJ Ruling Could Impact Who Qualifies for Lifeline
• 15 Years Later: North Carolina’s Municipal Broadband Ban

Upcoming Events

June 10—Consumer Protection and Accessibility Advisory Committee Meeting (Federal Communications Commission)

June 11—Don’t Stop BEAD-lievin’: Tracking Broadband Deployment Progress, Pitfalls, and Policy Implications (Federal Communications Bar Association)

June 16—Policy Outlook on Data Privacy & Cybersecurity (Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council)

June 16—How to Protect Kids From Chatbots Without Bans (Information Technology & Innovation Foundation)

June 17—Community Connect (Department of Agriculture)

June 25—June 2026 Open Federal Communications Commission Meeting (Federal Communications Commission)

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

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