BEAD ‘Non-Deployment’ Fund Guidance A No Show, Creating More Delays

The Trump administration continues to give muddled guidance in terms of the whopping $21 billion in “non-deployment” funds states should have at their disposal from the “savings” created by unwelcome changes to the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. Dramatic, unpopular, and unlawful changes to BEAD by the National Telecommunication and Information Administration have resulted in infighting and delays, after the Trump administration tried to steer billions in taxpayer funds to slower and more congested satellite broadband networks owned by the President’s biggest donors. The broadly-criticized shift was sold as a new “benefit of the bargain” program necessary to “cut costs.” The illusory savings created by those changes have resulted in an estimated $21 billion of BEAD’s $42.5 billion in broadband funding falling into a bureaucratic purgatory, resulting in ample infighting over where that money should go, whether that’s back to the Treasury, back to the states, or repurposed elsewhere. But Congress and the underlying infrastructure law was very specific: the entirety of the $42.5 billion in BEAD deployment funds was to be spent on broadband expansion. The Trump administration, operating against the law (according to the GAO) and primarily in the service of key donors, clearly has other ideas.