BEAD Process Will Be Chaotic, But Some Plans Can Be Salvaged

The reverberations from the last-minute changes to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program continue. But, since the new BEAD plans were unveiled, industry expert Blair Levin—policy adviser to New Street Research—has had time to refine his assessment. “Our initial reaction was that the new rules would shift funds from fiber to satellite, a negative for wired providers… We still think that but in talking to numerous stakeholders, that magnitude of the shift may be less than we initially thought.” Levin reviewed the impact of the rules and provided a new analysis. The process, he wrote, may be chaotic in a similar manner to the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction, but he suggested that states may be able to salvage more of their original BEAD plans than was originally thought likely. That, by no measure, means that the changes will be easy to navigate. Complicated changes and uncertainty around the challenge process could add time to the process “that the new rules do not appear to contemplate,” Levin suggested.