Tuesday, June 10, 2025
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Reactions to the Trump Administration's Changes to the BEAD Program
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The deed is done. NTIA has officially rewritten the rules of the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, essentially forcing states back to square one on their plans to address the digital divide. As anticipated, the new notice of funding opportunity nixed the BEAD preference for end-to-end fiber. The notice now defines a “priority broadband project” as one that provides service at speeds of no less than 100/20 Mbps with latency less than or equal to 100 milliseconds. Further, NTIA said it “hereby rescinds all Final Proposal approvals that occurred prior to the publication of this Notice.” This includes proposals from Louisiana, Nevada, and Delaware, the states that have already announced which providers will receive BEAD funding. All states and territories have 90 days to comply with the new NOFO, which also requires them to conduct at least one additional subgrantee selection round (dubbed “Benefit of the Bargain”) to ensure the lowest-cost broadband option, “regardless of technology employed.” With BEAD funds shifting away from fiber to more fixed wireless access and low-earth orbit satellite, “there is a distinct possibility that in many places wireline enterprises simply will not bid,” said New Street Research Policy Analyst Blair Levin.
‘Outraged’ Democrat Sen. Rosen Retaliates Against Lutnick over New BEAD Rules, Nevada's Rescinded Approval
Sen Jacky Rosen (D-NV) said she plans to slow-walk Commerce Department nominees that oversee broadband in response to the agency rescinding approval of her state’s $416 million broadband expansion plan. The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration under Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick released its revised rules for the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. The new policy rescinded Biden-era approval of final spending plans from the three states that had received it, including Nevada, and will require all states and territories to conduct an additional round of bidding. “I’m beyond outraged that the Trump Administration has moved the goal post yet again and rescinded Nevada’s approval to get the BEAD funding I secured to connect the hardest-to-reach communities in our state to high-speed internet,” Sen Rosen said in a statement. “This decision will put Nevada’s broadband funding in jeopardy, and it’s a slap in the face to rural communities that need access to high-speed internet. I’m going to put a hold on all nominations for Commerce Department positions that oversee or deal with broadband policy in any way, and block their expedited confirmation, until Nevada gets its BEAD funding.”
The June 2025 Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Policy Notice significantly rewrites the rules of the $42.45 billion federal broadband program just as states and territories were preparing to implement their plans. After the National Telecommunications and Information Administration spent over a year approving 56 unique, state-tailored Final Proposals—each shaped by the original 2023 Notice of Funding Opportunity’s emphasis on flexibility, local coordination, affordability, and fiber preference—the agency has now rescinded those approvals and issued a uniform, cost-first, technology-neutral framework that all states must follow. This change isn’t subtle. It eliminates preferences for fiber, labor standards, affordability requirements, climate resilience, municipal ownership, and other values-based priorities that many states baked into their processes. States that prioritized community-driven networks, built local partnerships, and ran extensive outreach now face immense sunk costs. They, and everyone, must start over—rescinding awards, reopening application processes, and revising scoring systems within 90 days. TL;DR? Fiber’s out, fixed wireless and LEO are in, and your state or territory’s final proposal is a paperweight.
[Dr. Alexis D. Schrubbe is the Director of the Internet Equity Initiative at the University of Chicago’s Data Science Institute.]
The BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice released on June 6, 2025, is full of changes. One is a shift in language from “fiber first” and “Extremely High Cost per Location Threshold” to “technology-neutral.” After another round of bidding, under new rules, where will BEAD end up? Will the fiber networks the public has been expecting emerge, or will they be largely replaced by fixed wireless networks and satellite? A hopeful scenario is that:
- Fiber will continue to dominate as in the Biden-era BEAD.
- State plans will change slightly, primarily at the margins.
- Hybrid technology networks will become more common, with “alternative” technology choices appearing in geographically remote/expensive to serve (with any technology) locations.
[Randolph Luening is the founder of BroadbandToolkit.com, a leading provider of broadband infrastructure planning software and services.]
When the National Telecommunications and Information Administration made it clear that it was going to change the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program rules, I wrote a piece that I called, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the BEAD Bingo Card. It listed a range of options for how NTIA might modify BEAD—from canceling the program to leaving it largely intact. On June 6, NTIA issued a BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice that defines how BEAD is going to work. I would classify the NTIA’s solution as “RDOFing the BEAD process.” By that, I think NTIA adopted the worst features of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. The primary criteria for picking a winner is the requested BEAD funds per eligible location. Whoever asks for the least amount of money wins. Broadband Grant Offices can consider speed to deployment and broadband speeds, but only if a grant application is within 15 percent of the lowest bid. This feels like a one-round reverse auction. This completely tosses away the idea that BEAD would be used to build networks that will last for the rest of the century—some of the winning BEAD projects will be behind the rest of the country the second they are built. It’s clear to me that the NTIA wants to spend as little as possible of the $42.5 billion. The Department of Commerce wants to take credit for saving money and doesn’t care about getting good broadband to rural areas. This Notice has a clear message: Congress said we have to build broadband everywhere, so we’ll build what is barely adequate for today and ignore what’s needed for the future. This Notice punts the rural broadband gap down the road for the next generation to solve.
Lumen Technologies wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to relinquish Rural Digital Opportunity Fund awards in areas of Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon, and Washington. "As a result of Lumen’s relinquishment of support, these census block groups may now become eligible for other federal, state, or local subsidy programs, such as the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program. Lumen is also notifying the relevant state broadband offices and Tribal governments of its intent to return the locations in the affected CBGs and their potential eligibility for alternative funding. Lumen understands that it will no longer be entitled to receive further RDOF support for the surrendered CBGs and that it may be subject to applicable non-compliance rules. Lumen reserves its right to seek relief from any penalties, including via waiver of the Commission’s rules, as well as its right to seek other relief as may be necessary."
The Appalachian Regional Commission invites proposals from qualified consultants to assess the performance and outcomes of ARC’s broadband grants and better understand the grant implementation experiences of grantees. ARC’s investments in broadband are designed to address unmet needs and create connections to help Appalachian communities thrive. These investments have expanded over the years, from exclusively broadband construction (or deployment) projects to non-construction projects that support access to available and affordable broadband—including digital opportunity projects and, more recently, broadband as a service projects. This program evaluation will examine over 80 grants that closed between Fiscal Years 2019 and 2023, representing $28 million in ARC funding.
The Universal Service Fund's reliance on a shrinking base of traditional voice services has created an unsustainable contribution rate, prompting industry leaders to call for technology giants to start paying into the fund. While companies like Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Netflix earn an estimated $2,600 annually from each household connected through the USF, they contribute virtually nothing to maintaining that connectivity. The discussion comes as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on a Constitutional challenge to the fund's structure in Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers Research, which argues that Congress improperly delegated authority to the FCC to administer the fund and that the agency's use of a private company to collect fees violates constitutional principles. While the experts expressed cautious optimism that the high court would uphold Universal Service, there was broad consensus that the funding mechanism must be overhauled regardless of the legal outcome. Besides targeting big tech companies, options included broadening the assessment base to cover all broadband services rather than just traditional voice, or shifting to general tax revenues through congressional appropriations.
In the world of broadband, fiber providers and fixed wireless access providers tend to be at odds. But Karsten Gewecke, president of Zyxel Communications, believes it doesn’t need to be that way. Gewecke, who is from Denmark, pointed to his experience with European markets as proof positive that fiber and FWA should go hand-in-hand. Gewecke noted that providers in Norway were quick to adopt 5G FWA technology to provide connectivity as the fiber infrastructure was being developed. Gewecke doesn’t see fiber and FWA as competing: “For [Zyxel], it’s really just another access technology,” he said. He recognizes that the two technologies have different strengths: fiber offers speeds likely to satisfy consumers’ needs for 10 years or more, while FWA offers a simpler in-home setup. But the speeds fixed wireless can ensure are advancing quickly. The future, Gewecke said, will be built around a combination of fiber and fixed wireless.
EchoStar is in a fight for its life, and its latest salvo used Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s own words to explain why the agency should not backtrack after the company spent billions of dollars deploying a 5G network using spectrum the FCC authorized it to use. Then-Commissioner Carr in June 2023 appeared before a House subcommittee hearing where he was asked about calls for the FCC to reverse spectrum allocation decisions. He said those demands were cause for concern. “We should not be coming in behind after the fact and pulling the rug out from under us," he argued at the time. EchoStar’s lawyers cited that scene in an FCC filing to illustrate how it’s in the best interest of the U.S. for EchoStar to continue doing what it’s doing: building out a 5G open RAN network using spectrum the FCC gave EchoStar the rights to use. The FCC, under Chairman Carr’s instructions, is currently giving EchoStar a hard time as it tries to fulfill its obligations as a fourth facilities-based U.S. wireless operator.
California Assembly Bill 353, which will require every provider in the state to offer an affordable internet option for no more than $15 per month, passed the Assembly floor on June 4 by a 52-17 margin. “In light of the federal internet subsidy program going away, we have to do something for California,” said Assemblymember Tasha Boerner, who introduced the legislation. “More than three million low-income households are currently without affordable internet service in our state. This is not an urban versus rural issue or a Republican versus Democrat issue. Every legislator across the country has constituents who struggle with affordable broadband access.”
Sustaining Select Efforts to Strengthen the Nation's Cybersecurity and Amending Executive Order 13694 and Executive Order 14144
President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity by focusing on critical protections against foreign cyber threats and enhancing secure technology practices. The order:
- Directs the Federal government to advance secure software development.
- Directs department and agency-level action on border gateway security to defeat hijacking of network interconnections.
- Directs department and agency-level actions on post-quantum cryptography to ensure protection against threats that may leverage next-generation compute architectures.
- Refocuses artificial intelligence cybersecurity efforts towards identifying and managing vulnerabilities.
- Directs technical measures to promulgate cybersecurity policy, including machine-readable policy standards and formal trust designations for “Internet of Things” as a way to ensure that Americans can know that their personal and home devices meet basic security engineering principles.
The wildest, scariest, indisputable truth about AI's large language models is that the companies building them don't know exactly why or how they work. With the most powerful companies pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into willing superhuman intelligence into a quick existence, and Washington doing nothing to slow or police them, it seems worth dissecting this Great Unknown. Large Language Models—including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Google's Gemini—are massive neural networks that ingest massive amounts of information (much of the internet) to learn to generate answers. The engineers know what they're setting in motion and what data sources they draw on. But the LLM's size means even the experts can't explain exactly why it chooses to say anything in particular. Google's Sundar Pichai, and really all of the big AI company CEOs, argue that humans will learn to better understand how these machines work and find clever, if yet unknown ways, to control them and "improve lives." The companies all have big research and safety teams, and a huge incentive to tame the technologies if they ever want to realize their full value. After all, no one will trust a machine that makes stuff up or threatens them. But, as of today, they do both—and no one knows why.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington (DC) rejected a request for a preliminary injunction filed by three board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—Laura Ross, Diane Kaplan, and Thomas Rothman—who sued the Trump administration after receiving termination notices via email on April 28. Judge Moss ruled that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a strong likelihood that the firings were unlawful or that they would suffer irreparable harm. But CPB officials celebrated the ruling as a win, pointing to part of the ruling that acknowledges that “Congress intended to preclude the President (or any subordinate officials acting at his direction) from directing, supervising, or controlling the Corporation.” Following the ruling, CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison signed a document affirming that the three members remain on the board.
Former Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai is back on the telecommunications policy scene as chief lobbyist for the mobile industry, and he has quickly managed to anger a coalition that includes both cable companies and consumer advocates. In April, Pai became president and CEO of wireless industry lobby group CTIA. Shortly after, he visited the White House to discuss wireless industry priorities and had a meeting with Brendan Carr, the current FCC chairman who was part of Pai's Republican majority at the FCC from 2017 to 2021. Pai's move to CTIA means he is now battling a variety of industry players and advocacy groups over the allocation of spectrum. As always, wireless companies AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile want more spectrum and the exclusive rights to use it. The fight puts Pai at odds with the cable industry that cheered his many deregulatory actions when he led the FCC.
Elon Musk’s satellite broadband company Starlink has reaped massive gains since he became “first buddy” to Trump. Numerous countries have cut red tape to approve Starlink this year, some reportedly under pressure from Trump’s State Department. In some cases, countries appeared to be giving Starlink a green light in order to ingratiate themselves with the White House. Now, Musk’s feud with President Donald Trump raises the question of how Starlink will fare in future negotiations. Will countries feel the need to let it in? Will President Trump go to bat for the company? “Starlink has already received market access in the easiest countries and the mid-tier countries,” he said. “What’s left is the hard countries. That’s where the State Department gets involved.” Blair Levin said he has seen an unconventional element in the State Department’s discussions over Starlink: They’re tying in the White House’s tariff policy as well.
Web pages load at a crawling pace. Video streams glitch and freeze. Outside Bolivia’s biggest cities, the nearest internet signal is sometimes hours away over treacherous mountain roads. So when Elon Musk’s Starlink offered Bolivia fast, affordable internet beamed from space, many expected the Andean nation of 12 million to celebrate. Instead, Bolivia said no thanks. Starlink’s advance has been stymied by Bolivia, which refused to give it an operating license, with experts and officials citing worries over its unchecked dominance everywhere it has set up shop, instead choosing to rely on the country’s own aging Chinese-made satellite. The decision to reject Starlink has puzzled and angered people in Bolivia, where internet speeds are the slowest in South America and hundreds of thousands remain offline. Without an internet connection, people often struggle to get an education and lack access to jobs and fast help during natural disasters. But in keeping Starlink out, Bolivia has joined other nations that have begun to raise alarm about SpaceX and the political influence Elon Musk can exert through his control of a telecommunications network used by governments, militaries and people across the world.
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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