The Future of ReConnect

Is there any practical future for the US Department of Agriculture's ReConnect program? The Senate Appropriations Committee recently approved the fiscal year 2026 budget for the Department of Agriculture. Buried within that budget is $100 million for new ReConnect loans or grants. It’s still early in the federal budget process, and the $100 million slated for next year is a preliminary number, but it’s already lower than previous annual allocations to the program. ReConnect has been a popular program, particularly with cooperatives and small telephone companies. ReConnect was launched in December 2018 by Congress with an initial budget of $600 million. Additional funds continue to be allocated, including $550 million in 2020 and $1.15 billion in 2021. USDA is still sitting on $980 million of remaining appropriated funds, but is also sitting on $3 billion in funding requests. ReConnect has always been an interesting program. USDA can use the funding for grants, loans, or a combination of the two. The program is intended to bring broadband to unserved rural locations, and the ReConnect process gives extra consideration to locations that are not close to any towns or cities. I ask if ReConnect will still be relevant in upcoming years for several reasons. First, if you believe the hype about BEAD grants, every location in the country will soon be slated to get broadband of at least 100/20 Mbps. But there will still be remaining unserved locations around the country after BEAD.  Any future ReConnect grant is going to require cobbling together scattered locations into a single grant request, and that will require changes in the ReConnect rules.