Fiber is the gold standard for rural broadband - BEAD must emphasize it

As the federal government prepares to invest tens of billions in rural broadband through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, the choice of technology is no longer just a technical decision—it is a generational one. BEAD must prioritize not only what works today, but also what will serve Americans for decades. On every metric that matters—capacity, performance, scalability, reliability, and longevity—fiber stands alone. In my latest report, Broadband Comparison, I compared the full range of broadband technologies: fiber optics, coaxial cable, fixed wireless access, and satellite. The results are clear and compelling. Fiber offers extremely high capacity, symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds, imperviousness to weather, and enormous scalability. A single strand of fiber can carry more than 300 terabits per second—that’s hundreds of times more than the bandwidth of the entire radio spectrum up to 100 GHz. 

[Peter Rysavy is president of Rysavy Research and has been analyzing and reporting on broadband technologies for thirty years.]