Tuesday, August 26, 2025
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Fiber is the gold standard for rural broadband - BEAD must emphasize it
Commissioner Trusty Visits Alaska to Discuss Broadband Expansion
BEAD
State/Local
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As the federal government prepares to invest tens of billions in rural broadband through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, the choice of technology is no longer just a technical decision—it is a generational one. BEAD must prioritize not only what works today, but also what will serve Americans for decades. On every metric that matters—capacity, performance, scalability, reliability, and longevity—fiber stands alone. In my latest report, Broadband Comparison, I compared the full range of broadband technologies: fiber optics, coaxial cable, fixed wireless access, and satellite. The results are clear and compelling. Fiber offers extremely high capacity, symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds, imperviousness to weather, and enormous scalability. A single strand of fiber can carry more than 300 terabits per second—that’s hundreds of times more than the bandwidth of the entire radio spectrum up to 100 GHz.
[Peter Rysavy is president of Rysavy Research and has been analyzing and reporting on broadband technologies for thirty years.]
Rural broadband is facing a dramatic moment when the National Telecommunications and Information Administration decides what it's going to do with the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment proposals that States have presented to it. State Broadband Offices have been submitting final BEAD plans that are mostly fiber, which seems to fly in the face of the Trump administration's June 2025 changes to the program. The new BEAD guidelines issued in June made it much harder for SBOs to award money for fiber—but left a small loophole. SBOs could designate some BEAD applications as ‘priority broadband projects’, as long as they met three criteria. A proposed technology had to (1) meet the speed, latency, reliability, and consistency criteria established by the BEAD legislation, (2) be able to scale over time to meet foreseeable future broadband demand, and (3) support the deployment of 5G and other successor technologies. SBOs have seemingly aggressively used this loophole to disqualify alternative technologies and still award BEAD to fiber projects. NTIA now faces a big choice. SBOs (and the Governors they work for) have clearly said that they want BEAD money to build fiber. NTIA can now concede to the requests from States, or play the bad cop and tell States to kill most of the proposed grants for fiber.
The Washington State Broadband Office is releasing its Final Proposal for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program. The public comment period runs until September 1, 2025 at 5 PM PDT. Comments can be filed via this link. The state has provisionally awarded
$849,894,572 to 27 internet service providers. 36 percent of broadband serviceable locations will be covered by fiber, 27 percent will be served by low-Earth orbit satellite, and 39 percent will be served by fixed wireless.
The Oklahoma Broadband Office released the Oklahoma Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Grant Program Final Proposal on August 25 for public comment due by September 1, 2025, at 11:59 pm. The final proposal includes $550 million in funding to 20 internet service providers to cover 34,000 locations in the state. 65 percent of locations will be served by fiber, while 20 percent will be served by fixed wireless, and 15 will be served by low-Earth orbit satellite.
The Kansas Office of Broadband Development released the state's Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program Final Proposal. The public comment period is open until September 1, 2025, at noon CST. Comments can be filed at this link. The final proposal includes $451,725,998 in funding to 16 internet service providers, covering over 26,000 eligible locations. 46 percent of locations will be served by fiber, while 3 percent will be served by low-Earth orbit satellites, and 51 percent will be served by fixed wireless.
Federal Communications Commissioner Olivia Trusty returned from a week-long visit to Alaska, where she met with industry leaders, as well as federal, state, local, and Tribal stakeholders to see firsthand the investments, policies, and hard work driving broadband expansion to some of the nation’s most remote and difficult-to-serve areas. Commissioner Trusty said, “Nowhere is the challenge of expanding broadband access more acute than in Alaska, where rugged terrain and vast distances make it both difficult and expensive to connect remote villages. Yet, notwithstanding these challenges, Alaska’s providers are leveraging FCC programs to deliver high-speed broadband services to communities across the state, opening access to education, healthcare, commerce, and economic opportunity for thousands of Alaskans. The FCC’s recent efforts to accelerate broadband deployment under the Build America Agenda – including, streamlining Commission rules to speed high-speed infrastructure builds, removing outdated regulatory barriers, and promoting U.S. leadership in wireless services – are already making a tangible difference.”
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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