Digital Beat

The New BEAD Policy Notice:
Course Correction or RDOF 2.0?

Remarks at the

Broadband Communities Summit

Houston Texas

June 23, 2025

(as prepared for delivery)

Welcome to the second annual American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB) Pre-Conference Workshop at the Broadband Communities Summit. Our two panels today are going to focus on the nuts and bolts of funding, building, running and obtaining political and public support for community broadband networks. Many communities find the prospect of building and owning a network daunting—we want to demonstrate that with leadership and good planning, it’s not only possible, but leads to numerous benefits for the community and its leaders.

Before we get to the basics, I’m going to talk about something that I imagine will be discussed at about half of the panels here—the Commerce Department’s June 6 Policy Notice laying out the Administration’s new requirements for the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program.

While I’m sure that some of you are steeped in the details of the Policy Notice, I’m guessing that many of you aren’t. My plan is to walk you through the highlights and give my spin. Then I want to open the floor to your reactions—positive or negative.

I don’t have time to hit every change, so let me touch on six of the biggest ones:

Every state, including those that previously had their final proposals approved by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will have to engage in one final round of bidding—known as the “Benefit of the Bargain” Round. Any new rules, new maps, the new round of bidding, and final selection of winners, must be completed 90 days from the publication of the Policy Notice—September 4.
The Benefit of the Bargain Round of bidding must be technology neutral—meaning that BEAD’s preference for fiber is gone. Any technology that can provide 100/20 speeds with a latency less than or equal to 100 milliseconds can bid. This includes LEO satellite and unlicensed fixed wireless providers. Importantly, applicants can exclude Broadband Serviceable Locations (BSLs) that they deem to be “excessively high cost.”
The state must choose the combination of project proposals with the lowest overall cost to the program. If an application to serve the same general project area proposes a project cost within 15 percent of the lowest cost proposal, the state can consider factors like speed to deployment, network speed, and other technical capabilities.
An unlicensed fixed wireless provider can have more locations taken off the map if they purport to serve them—which could remove, by some estimates, up to 1.1 million locations. A recent analysis by AAPB Member BroadbandToolkit.com concluded that 11 states would lose more than 25% of their locations, and Nevada would lose as much as 78 percent!
Biden-era requirements not mandated by the bipartisan infrastructure law are repealed, including those related to labor, climate change, open access and net neutrality, middle class affordability, low-cost options and so-called “preferences” for non-traditional providers.
The notice saves for another day the fate of non-deployment funds, which some states would like to use for digital literacy, devices and workforce development, among other things.

The satellite, unlicensed fixed wireless industries, and oddly, the cable industry were thrilled with the changes. On the other hand, reactions from state broadband offices, fiber providers, and advocates have ranged from panic to resignation to hope. Those who see the glass half full lean on the plain language of the infrastructure bill, which requires priority broadband projects to get first dibs on any project. A priority broadband project is defined as one where the network “can easily scale speeds over time to

meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses; and
support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services.”

Optimists believe that LEO satellite service and unlicensed fixed wireless services are unlikely to meet that standard, and in some cases might not even meet the basic speed and latency requirements. LEO service suffers from severe congestion problems, resulting in long waiting lists and high congestion fees, while unlicensed fixed wireless is dependent on the availability of unlicensed spectrum, which is no certainty given recent talks on Capitol Hill and at the FCC.

The burden is on the applicant to prove both that it is capable of achieving the speed and latency benchmarks and that it qualifies as a priority broadband project. Should satellite and unlicensed fixed wireless providers fail to meet one or both tests, a state broadband office could move forward with most of the fiber projects it had planned for originally.

Matt Dunne, a former Vermont state legislator and the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Rural Innovation, sees another path for fiber if states can access their own capital to provide greater match dollars for BEAD projects, thereby lowering the cost. I love that idea, but I worry that this will only help the wealthiest states, and that in an era of federal belt-tightening, many states are too resource-constrained to consider that option.

The glass half empty crowd views the focus on rewarding the lowest cost projects either as a victory for slow, expensive and congested technologies that will have to be upgraded in five years, or as a race to the bottom, resulting in underbidding and ultimately, defaults. This, of course, is what happened in the infamous Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF. A full 36 percent of those projects have already defaulted. Just last week, Lumen defaulted on 41,000 RDOF locations in eight states—meaning it has now defaulted on more than half of the locations it was awarded. Here’s a letter from January 2021, signed by 157 bipartisan, bicameral members of Congress that says, in essence—RDOF has been a disaster. Do we really want a RDOF Redux when it comes to the biggest one-time broadband investment in the nation’s history?

Fueling that pessimism is the fact that NTIA has the ability to reject any specific state determination that a project meets or does not meet the definition of “priority broadband project,” and also has a veto over any specific project or even a single connection if it deems the price for that project or connection to be excessive.

I tend to vacillate between being pessimistic and hopeful. The hyper-focus on lowest cost above all is a recipe for disaster, and NTIA’s line-item veto over every decision that could possibly result in an award to a fiber provider gives me pause. There are also politics—to the extent that some states might consider submitting a proposal that largely mimics what it had before—I worry that NTIA will reject it just so it can show that the changes to the program are meaningful. That the incoming but not yet confirmed NTIA administrator-designate is a staffer for supreme BEAD-hater Senator Ted Cruz is also not comforting.

My hopeful (and lawyerly) side points to the law, which the notice recognizes is binding. The law requires that priority broadband projects get, well, priority, and that those projects must “easily” scale to speeds to meet the evolving needs of homes AND businesses, as well as provide a backbone for 5G, future wireless service as well as other “advanced services,” like smart grid, AI, public safety management, transportation, etc. It will be difficult for LEO and unlicensed fixed wireless applicants to demonstrate that they can meet that standard. That doesn’t mean those technologies won’t win any BEAD awards—they already had in some states where building fiber was either geographically or financially infeasible. Should states make a convincing case of what qualifies as a priority broadband project, I’m not sure that NTIA and Commerce Secretary Lutnick will have the stomach for litigation. I’ve also been told that the Secretary just wants to be able to declare victory and focus on things he actually cares about, like trade wars and tariffs.

I’m also hopeful because I’ve had the privilege of meeting and working with about a third of the state broadband officers, and I have found them to be smart, hardworking public servants who are dedicated to providing the best broadband for their residents. I consider it a miracle that only one SBO has left his post since the Policy Notice was published. Many of them have asked for and gotten the support of their governors and other state officials. I think that support will be crucial for getting NTIA to approve their final grant proposals, but I worry that those SBOs without that support or from Democratic-run states might have a harder time.

What does this all mean for public broadband? To be sure, for those who have already bid, or won provisional awards, this means further expenditure of time and resources to rebid again. And the uncertainty around the future of non-deployment funds hurts everyone, since much of that money appeared to be headed towards programs that would result in more people using networks of all kinds.

But the delays and changes in the BEAD program are not the only place where the federal government has failed us (and I’m being bipartisan in that assessment). In early May, President Trump illegally rescinded most of the $2.75B Digital Equity Act grants, which would have supported state and private digital navigator programs that work to get the unconnected connected. And just over a year ago, Congress allowed the Affordable Connectivity Program to die. That was the $30 a month broadband subsidy in which 23 million low-income U.S. households participated.

In a twisted way, the uncertainty around BEAD, non-deployment and Digital Equity funds makes public broadband all the more critical. Without a doubt, when all is said and done, the money is spent and the networks are (hopefully) built, there will still be wide swaths of the country who are stuck with sub-optimal and in some cases no broadband. If your city or town falls into that doughnut hole, a community-owned network may be the fastest and best option.

Now you know what I think—what do you think? Is the policy notice just a bump in the road or is it the road to RDOF 2.0? Were you a BEAD applicant before, and will you be one again? Is your community now more or less likely to consider public broadband? Let’s open the floor for discussion.

Gigi Sohn is the Executive Director of the American Association for Public Broadband and the Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate.

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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