Monday, April 28, 2025
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Today | April 2025 Open Federal Communications Commission Meeting
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Why Would SpaceX Need $20 Billion from BEAD?
Louisiana BEAD Winners: Let the Program Move Forward
How Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC chair, is rattling media giants
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The most recent tallies for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program estimated that there are around 6.4 million unserved homes to be covered by the program. Hypothetically, let’s consider that we use Starlink for 6.4 million installations. What should that cost? The Wall Street Journal reported that “Musk’s SpaceX, could receive $10 billion to $20 billion” with “[Secretary] Lutnick’s overhaul.” Based on what? The current cost for a residential ground mount installation kit for Starlink is $349. Add $199 for a roof mount. At $548, 6.4 million kits would cost the BEAD program $3.5 billion. That’s $3.5 billion out of $43.5 billion to get every single “un- or underserved” home waiting on BEAD, a Starlink system. A good temporary solution while they build fiber. Also, for a provider to get BEAD funding, they have to cough up 30 percent to 50 percent in matching funds based on their total construction costs of building new fiber infrastructure. The only new component to the Starlink idea is the home “pizza box” installs. The Starlink network is existing. Where would the additional funding go if the Wall Street Journal BEAD estimates prove correct?
[In 2008, Chris Scharrer founded DCS Technology Design]
Two rural fiber providers that won grants from the government’s flagship broadband expansion program are urging the Trump administration to allow the effort to move forward without major changes. Both ClearPath and SkyRider won grants in Louisiana, one of the states given the green light under the Biden administration, to deploy fiber in rural areas. ClearPath was slated to receive more than $34 million to connect 7,300 homes and businesses, and SkyRider won more than $5.8 million to reach 764 locations. The companies both began doing preparatory work after being selected, designing networks, getting the necessary historical and environmental permits, and lining up contractors and equipment. They were planning on signing grant agreements with the state on March 1, according to SkyRider CEO Brad Warden. ClearPath founder David Herring said that the costs of ramping up capacity to do prep work, both for his company and the contractors he and other providers are partnering with to do that work, have created a financial burden. “I’m laid out millions of dollars right now in planning,” Herring said. “Every minute of delay, every week of delay, I continue to lose value on the dollars that I’ve already deployed.”
Amazon's Project Kuiper is behind on manufacturing its satellites and may miss its Federal Communications Commission deadline to get them into orbit, according to Bloomberg. The outlet reported that Project Kuiper has only completed several dozen satellites, a year into production, but is required to have over 1,600 low-Earth orbit satellites in orbit by the summer of 2026. The operator may need to request an extension from the FCC if it is unable to ramp up production. However, Project Kuiper could get financial support from the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program. In November 2024, Louisiana became the first state to award funding from the BEAD program and earmarked funds for non-fiber providers. At the time, Louisiana had $28.7 million pending for an "alternative technology provider" to cover 2,869 locations at $10,000 per location. While these areas received no interest from fiber or fixed wireless providers, they are expected to be covered by Starlink or Project Kuiper, which were both pre-approved providers for Louisiana's BEAD program.
The middle mile has been a problem for rural broadband service providers since early DSL services in the 1990s. Even today, the distance between a rural BSP’s service area to the nearest connection to the core network could be hundreds of miles. Establishing a fiber link to the core network is costly, and, with the distances involved, latency will creep into the service no matter how fast the last-mile, fiber-to-the-home speeds might be. Companies that require very low latency for their fiber communications have turned to using internet exchange points. An IXP is, simply put, a way to bring the internet closer to the user. It is a physical location located at an intermediate point between the core network and connecting internet service providers. A high-speed backbone line connects a small building or room in an office building to a series of switches. The result is a shorter middle mile, lower cost, and lower latency. To date, however, IXPs have been a tool to improve connectivity for large companies in urban areas and rarely in rural areas. In fact, 14 states have no IXPs. But that could be changing as data center owners seek rural areas to build facilities and meet the connectivity demands created by artificial intelligence.
The state of Texas has awarded Lyte Fiber LLC $57.8 million to provide broadband to 6,750 unserved and underserved homes and businesses in Marion and Navarro counties. The Navarro County grant—which represents $43.3 million of the total—was a recent award. The awards were made by the state’s Bringing Online Opportunities to Texas II Program, which is overseen by the Comptroller’s Broadband Development Office. The bulk of the funding will be provided by the Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund and the Texas Broadband Infrastructure Fund. Lyte Fiber, which is based in Houston, Texas, said that it will invest more than $11 million in the projects and deploy 900 miles of fiber.
Public Knowledge, along with the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, the Center for Digital Democracy, and Free Press, filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to reject attacks on the constitutionality of the Federal Communications Commission in recent Incarcerated Persons Communication Services litigation. This brief responds to arguments from a coalition of state attorneys general that the FCC’s structure, as a bipartisan independent agency with commissioners who cannot be removed for political reasons, violates the president’s constitutional powers. The brief demonstrates that this theory is fundamentally flawed, misreads nearly a century of established Supreme Court precedent, and threatens the independence of regulatory agencies that protect the public interest.
A look at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr's dramatic transformation from a low-key communications policy wonk into one of Trump’s staunchest cultural warriors. Since becoming FCC chairman in late January, Carr has repeatedly poked the corporate owners of ABC, CBS and NBC — networks the president dislikes. In 2024, Donald Trump sued CBS over edits to a pre-election “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has demanded $20 billion, alleging the interview was doctored to make Harris look better. CBS should lose its licenses, Trump has said. Chairman Carr opened an FCC inquiry into whether the “60 Minutes” edits rose to the level of news distortion. He ordered CBS to turn over raw footage of the Harris interview. CBS complied and outtakes showed Harris was quoted accurately, bolstering CBS’ account that it had not manipulated the interview. But the issue has roiled CBS owner Paramount Global and stalled the company’s proposed sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media. Conservatives have said they believe major networks suffer from extreme liberal bias and an intolerance toward opposing points of view. That has harmed America and resulted in a plummeting public trust in national news outlets, they assert, adding that FCC intervention may be justified. “The FCC over the last decade or so has walked away from enforcing [its] public interest obligations on broadcasters,” Chairman Carr said in a March interview with the D.C.-centric Punchbowl News. He wants to restore the agency’s teeth. “If a broadcaster has a problem with that ... the FCC address is 45 L Street, Northeast,” Chairman Carr said. “They can give us their licenses back.”
Elon Musk arrived in Washington as the most powerful political outsider ever, brimming with Silicon Valley swagger and bipartisan buy-in for his goal of streamlining the federal government. He's leaving with his reputation wounded, relationships severed, companies in crisis, fortune diminished—and little to show for DOGE but chaos and contested savings. He's still beloved by President Trump, but his favorability ratings have plummeted amid scrutiny of DOGE's mass layoffs, sweeping program cuts, and unprecedented access to Americans' personal data. Musk may not have achieved his audacious goal of cutting $2 trillion from America's debt, but the disruption he unleashed inside the federal government will reverberate for decades.
Charter Communications reported financial and operating results for the three months ended March 31, 2025. Highlights include:
- First quarter total Internet customers decreased by 60,000. As of March 31, 2025, Charter served 30.0 million Internet customers.
- First quarter total mobile lines increased by 514,000. As of March 31, 2025, Charter served 10.4 million mobile lines.
- As of March 31, 2025, Charter had a total of 31.4 million customer relationships, excluding mobile-only relationships.
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said the company will continue to consider merger and acquisition opportunities where appropriate—but that the company would lean toward "pureplay fiber" options where available. "We are interested in the space," Sievert said of T-Mobile's growing fiber ambitions. "We're out there kicking the tires. Our appetite is limited. It has to be just the right thing. And we've kind of shown our preference for pureplay fiber. That doesn't mean we're going to limit ourselves to that, but we've shown our preference for that." Sievert's comments are noteworthy considering rumors that AT&T is preparing a $5.5 billion bid for Lumen Technologies' consumer fiber assets, as well as ongoing speculation that T-Mobile might make a play for cable company Charter Communications.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org), Grace Tepper (grace AT benton DOT org), and Zoe Walker (zwalker AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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