In the past week, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program has received a good deal of attention in Washington, D.C.. The BEAD Program was created by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) which provided $42.5B for broadband investment via grants for States, Territories, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for broadband deployment. The priority for funding is the deployment of broadband services to unserved areas (those below 25/3 Mbps), underserved areas (those below 100/20 Mbps), and then serving community anchor institutions (1/1 Gbps). The BEAD Program is administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Since the enactment of the IIJA and the creation of the BEAD program, the States have created programs for the receipt and disbursement of BEAD funding and have worked with NTIA for approval of their plans that will ultimately result in the receipt and disbursement by the states of broadband grants to successful applicants.
On March 5, 2025, Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, issued a statement highly critical of the BEAD Program’s progress to date. Secretary Lutnick’s cites the BEAD Program’s burdensome regulations and favoritism towards certain technologies as reasons as to why the BEAD Program has not, to date, connected a single person to the Internet. Further, he announced that the Department of Commerce has launched a review of the BEAD Program. The review will result in changes to the BEAD Program to introduce a technology neutral approach that he believes will result in internet access at the lowest price. Additionally, the review will explore ways to cut government red tape that slows down infrastructure deployment.
In a related development, on March 5, 2025, a Bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that addresses the BEAD Program. The Bill is titled the Streamlining Program Efficiency and Expanding Deployment for BEAD Act, or the Speed for BEAD Act. The legislation proposes to amend the IIJA to improve the BEAD Program. The Bill includes the following proposed changes:
* The name of the program would be changed to the Broadband Expansion, Access, and Deployment Program.
* The Bill requires that any technology that can deliver reliable broadband service be acceptable under the Program.
* No regulation of rates is permitted including the methods of calculating rates for consumers generally or for any subset of consumers. Rates should not be considered as part of an application scoring process.
* The Bill prohibits consideration of several issues in the grant application and scoring process including many issues related to the labor force and workforce composition. Additional prohibitions are included related to the regulation of network management practices including data caps, climate change, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
As mentioned above, the States have been working with NTIA for approvals of their BEAD programs and many States are far along in that process in conformance with the BEAD Program criteria and regulations created by the IIJA. Should significant changes to the BEAD Program process result from the Department of Commerce’s review or the Legislation described above, it’s possible that these changes could require the States and NTIA to revisit their progress to date and could lead to further delays towards the stated goal of Broadband deployment. We will continue to closely follow these issues and will provide updates as additional information becomes available.
In response to the Department of Commerce’s announcement regarding changes to the BEAD Program, FCC Commissioner Gomez issued a statement. Commissioner Gomez stressed the importance of ensuring that the BEAD Program will provide equal access to high quality broadband service and affordability must be a top priority especially considering the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program. She further stated that BEAD without equity is just BAD.
