Shirley Bloomfield on rural broadband progress, BEAD's 'bargain' and USF

Light Reading's Nicole Ferraro and NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association's Shirley Bloomfield discuss how connectivity in the rural US has evolved over the last 40 years, the progress communities have made toward closing the digital divide, and the challenges still ahead to reaching remaining homes and businesses and sustaining networks long term. They also discuss increasing consumer demand for gigabit speeds, and how those trends don't exactly line up with the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program's shift to awarding more funds to low-Earth orbit satellite service versus retaining its focus on fiber. (As of this writing, under the Trump administration's revised version of the BEAD program, roughly 63 percent of BEAD locations will be served with fiber, while nearly 23 percent will receive satellite.) "I think we've got to be real about the fact that if you're going to build a broadband program, you really should be building to where consumers are going. And frankly, they're already there," Bloomfield says.