Commerce Secretary Lutnick Confirms No Effort to Rescind BEAD Non-Deployment Funds

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick touted the Trump administration’s success in halving the $42 billion price tag for broadband deployment under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, and confirmed that the government has no intention of keeping states from receiving all allocated funds, non-deployment as well as deployment. But lawmakers pressed Sec Lutnick on why BEAD has not yet connected any households, how quickly states can move from approved plans to funding, and what the National Telecommunications and Information Administration plans to do with more than $20 billion in uncommitted dollars.