BEAD Needs All Technologies to Succeed

The $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program faces serious hurdles in its goal to “make sure that every American has access to reliable, affordable, high-speed Internet.” For one, traditional broadband is capital intensive, requiring large initial investments to deploy infrastructure. The theory behind BEAD was that it would resolve this issue through a massive one-time lump-sum expenditure to deploy broadband infrastructure to every American. However, we are now three years removed from when BEAD legislation was passed, and it has become clear that technological advancements have outrun the program’s regulatory guidelines. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has designed the program to give it a strong preference for using expensive fiber-optic cables. But technological developments since BEAD’s inception make that approach harmful to the ultimate goal of closing the digital divide.