Trump Republicans Made A Historic Mess Of This Massive Broadband Grant Program

from the dysfunction-junction dept

I’ve written a lot this year about how Republicans hijacked the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program (created by the 2021 infrastructure bill) and immediately set about weakening oversight standards, eliminating enforcement of stuff like broadband affordability, speed, and equitable deployment, and making it a priority to heavily subsidize Elon Musk for LEO satellite broadband networks he had already planned to deploy anyway.

All of the chaos and changes have resulted in endless delays, and a lot of promising providers backing out of the BEAD program entirely. That includes electric cooperatives, many of which have been pushing affordable fiber optics into their existing, very rural electrical footprints.

The Trump NTIA process has been so filled with cronyism, delays, changes, new pointless regulations and chaos, a third or more of U.S. cooperatives say they’ll no longer participate:

“63 electric cooperatives across 27 states received provisional BEAD awards to offer reliable high-speed broadband to some of the most challenging eligible locations in the country. But delayed implementation and shifting guidance have created a program defined by uncertainty and confusion. Instead of accelerating deployment, continual revisions to the program have discouraged participation,” said Matheson.

“To date, 20 of the 63 electric cooperatives originally slated to participate in BEAD have withdrawn from the program. Many others are considering withdrawal, citing concerns over the application of extra-statutory pole attachment requirements as a condition of participation,” he added.”

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Cooperatives are annoyed, in part, about new pole-attachment regulations the NTIA applied that make installations much more time-consuming and complex. The Communications Act explicitly exempted electric cooperatives and municipal utilities from federal pole regulation because such providers serve the public interest and are often the only ones willing to connect rural Americans.

Many incumbent telecoms control local poles, and make pole fiber attachment extra annoying to forestall competition. I’d suspect the new restrictions — from an administration that generally demonizes corporate oversight and regulation — are at the direct request of companies like AT&T, worried that popular cooperatives might gobble up market share in markets they theoretically could serve in the future.

It’s worth reminding you: Republicans spent the entirety of the last few years insisting that BEAD was a giant government boondoggle, and that once in office they’d fix it. This claim was routinely propped up by the likes of Ezra Klein at the New York Times, who hasn’t had a single solitary thing to say about U.S. broadband access policy in the two-years since Trumpism retook control of the program.

Congress originally set aside $42.5 billion to improve U.S. broadband. The Trump administration effectively tried to cut the program in half, insisting that Elon Musk’s expensive, congested satellite service would be “good enough” for a lot of these locations. The Trump administration then very clearly tried to wander off with the remaining money, and continues to be very murky about when states will receive it.

Fixing U.S. broadband requires a coordinated array of solutions. Some communities are helped by municipally-owned broadband. Some are helped by the local electrical cooperative getting into fiber and expanding cheap fiber access to rural communities. Others are best served by public-private partnerships between local governments and private providers.

The Trump administration’s BEAD changes have worked tirelessly to redirect a lot of money away from these popular, highly localized solutions, and funnel as much money as possible into the back pocket of incumbent monopolies like AT&T and Comcast, or billionaires like Elon Musk.

Other smaller and mid-sized providers are increasingly backing away from participating in the program entirely, either because of new restrictions and delays, or because the cost of deployment is skyrocketing due to wars, tariffs, and other Trump bumbling. As more BEAD bidders back away from participation or existing awards, more and more money will be funneled to Musk for substandard service so Trump Republicans can pretend the problem of U.S. broadband access has been “fixed.”

In states like California, Trump officials are insisting that California won’t receive any of its already-scheduled $1.86 billion BEAD grant award if they do literally anything telecom monopolies don’t like, whether that’s holding big telecom affordable for high prices, or enforcing the state’s net neutrality law.

It’s a cronyistic mess that’s starting to see growing bipartisan anger even in states like Texas, and it’s poised to get much, much louder as the long-delayed money to states truly begins to flow next year. Right now, a lot of people in state broadband policy are hesitant to publicly comment because they’re worried the Trump administration will sever their grant awards entirely.

Filed Under: bead, broadband, cronyism, delays, elon musk, fiber, high speed internet, ntia, telecom