The plan for nationwide fiber internet might be upended for Starlink

For about 15 percent of US households as of 2023, the only internet options are crappy, especially in rural areas. But thanks to the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, which aims to connect everyone in the US to high-quality, mostly fiber-based internet, that’s close to changing. Or at least, it was. The plan’s lead architect, Evan Feinman, says that before he was forced out by the Trump administration in March, three US states were just one “minor administrative step” away from connecting their first residents under BEAD. In fact, he says, they could have started the process already — if not for US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a recent Trump appointee. In March, Sec Lutnick announced a “rigorous review” of BEAD, which he claims is too “woke” and filled with “burdensome regulations.” Now the plan may change. Lutnick’s changes to BEAD could hand a lot of the program’s money over to private interests like Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider, Starlink. And for every person whose home is served by a Starlink connection, their internet will likely be slower, less reliable, and more expensive than what BEAD might have gotten them with fiber. You can think of BEAD as a modern version of the nationwide US telephone network or electrification projects. It’s been more than three years since the Biden administration established the $42.5 billion program, and so far, it hasn’t actually connected anyone to the internet — a common criticism coming from the political right. But Feinman says that’s by design. “At every step of the game, states were screaming that we were going too fast,” he said. “When we made allocation, more than a dozen states sent us letters saying, ‘Go slower, go slower, go slower.’” In fact, Feinman says, the first states would already have started construction if it wasn’t for delays by the Trump administration, which has been encouraging states to redo finished phases of the program to make more space for satellite internet. That shift, Feinman said in April, could effectively mean “millions of private capital is in the garbage.”