Feds unveil ‘critical reforms’ to BEAD program
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick testifies before Congress earlier this week. Lutnick announced reforms to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program this week after a review. Andrew Harnik via Getty Images
By
Chris Teale
The $42.5 billion program to expand broadband will now be technology-neutral, rather than prefer fiber. Various workforce, climate and environment rules have also been relaxed.
The federal government on Friday unveiled what it called “critical reforms” to the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program that it said would remove regulatory burdens, lower costs and make it technologically neutral.
The Department of Commerce and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued a policy notice for the program and gave states 90 days to comply. During that time, they will also have to conduct what NTIA called an additional “Benefit of the Bargain Round” of subgrantee selection that it said would permit all applicants to compete on a level playing field.
Among the reforms, NTIA said it would adopt a “tech-neutral approach” to BEAD, having previously expressed a preference for fiber. NTIA said in a fact sheet this new approach “will bring the full force of the competitive marketplace to bear and allow American taxpayers to obtain the greatest return on their investment.”
NTIA also limited labor and employment requirements from BEAD and eliminated what it called “extraneous and burdensome obligations” to conduct analysis of projects’ impacts on climate change. The agency said to streamline environmental impact reviews, it would require the use of its own Environmental Screening and Permitting Tracking Tool, which is designed to expedite processing times by several months.
The agency also said it would end requirements around maintaining net neutrality for BEAD grant recipients, remove requirements around coordinating with groups focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and eliminate some paperwork. NTIA also said it would end what it described as “backdoor rate regulation” by refusing to accept any low-cost service options that attempt to impose a specific rate level.
The announcement follows a monthslong review of the BEAD program, instituted by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He had hinted at changes to the program in testimony before Congress earlier this week. In a statement, Lutnick said the changes “will deliver high-speed internet access efficiently on a technology-neutral basis, and at the right price.” He also said the “American people will get the benefit of the bargain, with connectivity delivered around the country at a fraction of the cost of the original program.” Other officials echoed those sentiments.
“Thanks to today’s reforms, the BEAD program can focus on what Congress intended: broadband deployment,” Adam Cassady, acting assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information and acting NTIA administrator, said in a statement. “Shelving the previous Administration’s unnecessary burdens, and opening access to all technology types, connects more Americans to broadband more quickly, and at a lower cost to the American taxpayer.”
The announced changes to BEAD appear to be in keeping with many of those requested by congressional Republicans, who introduced the Streamlining Program Efficiency and Expanding Deployment for BEAD Act — known as the SPEED for BEAD Act — in March.
Reps. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Richard Hudson, R-N.C., who are both leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a letter to President Donald Trump this week urging him to remove “unnecessary and burdensome requirements that made participation in the program more expensive and less attractive to broadband providers.”
Some state leaders had begged the federal government to let the BEAD program proceed, amid concerns that they would favor satellite internet technology and benefit Trump advisor Elon Musk’s Starlink. Opponents of BEAD reforms said they were strongly opposed to the changes, which come after Trump ended grant funding under the Digital Equity Act.
Revati Prasad, executive director of the nonprofit Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, called the changes to BEAD a “betrayal of rural America” that will mean those residents “will once again be left stuck with slow, unreliable, and expensive satellite internet access.” Going tech-neutral, others warned, does not provide the long-term stability that fiber does.
“China and Europe are going all in on fiber to position themselves for AI,” Benton’s Director of Policy Engagement Drew Garner said in a statement. “Under Secretary Lutnick, America is getting cheap, unreliable networks. That’s the definition of penny-wise, pound-foolish. Long-term infrastructure investment shouldn’t be cheap, it should be smart. Fiber-based broadband networks will last longer, provide better, more reliable service, and scale to meet communities’ ever-growing connectivity needs. NTIA’s new guidance is shortsighted and will undermine economic development in rural America for decades to come.”