Carol Mattey on BEAD hope and hysteria, and stalled USF reform

In 2025, after the National Telecommunications and Information Administration revised the rules for the federal government's $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, deprioritizing fiber deployments in the previously fiber-first program, there was broad concern that all or most of the funding would go to satellite providers. But  Carol Mattey—founder of Mattey Consulting and former deputy bureau chief at the Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau—wasn't so sure. In a two-part blog series—entitled "The Sky is Falling (or Maybe Not!!!)"—Mattey examined those concerns and proposed that maybe the situation was not as dire as people feared. She reasoned that the language in the law that created BEAD tasked states with picking "Priority Broadband Projects" over non-priority projects and gave states leeway in deciding which projects qualify. As such, that gave states the power to still award fiber projects, she suggested. Now, we revisit her argument in that blog series and her thoughts now that the vast majority of BEAD plans are finalized, with roughly 63 percnt of locations going to fiber and nearly 23 percent to satellite ... so, better numbers for fiber proponents than feared, but worse than was planned with Original BEAD.