[Speech] The New BEAD Policy Notice: Course Correction or RDOF 2.0?

AAPB Executive Director Gigi Sohn delivered this speech at the Broadband Communities Summit in Houston on June 23, 2025:

Welcome to the second annual AAPB Pre-Conference Workshop at the

Broadband Communities Summit. Our two panels today are going to focus on

the nuts and bolts of funding, building, running and obtaining political and public

support for community broadband networks. Many communities find the prospect of building and owning a network daunting – we want to demonstrate that with leadership and good planning, it’s not only possible, but leads to numerous benefits for the community and its leaders.

Before we get to the basics, I’m going to talk about something that I imagine will

be discussed at about half of the panels here - the Commerce Department’s

June 6 Policy Notice laying out the Administration’s new requirements for the

$42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

While I’m sure that some of you are steeped in the details of the Policy Notice,

I’m guessing that many of you aren’t. My plan is to walk you through the

highlights and give my spin. Then I want to open the floor to your reactions –

positive or negative.

I don’t have time to hit every change, so let me touch on 6 of the biggest ones:

1. Every state, including those that previously had their final proposals approved by NTIA will have to engage in one final round of bidding – known as the “Benefit of the Bargain” Round. Any new rules, new maps, the new round of bidding, and final selection of winners, must be completed 90 days from the publication of the Policy Notice – September 4.

   
   

2. The Benefit of the Bargain Round of bidding must be technology neutral –

   meaning that BEAD’s preference for fiber is gone. Any technology that can

   provide 100/20 speeds with a latency less than or equal to 100

   milliseconds, is eligible to win. This includes LEO satellite and unlicensed

   fixed wireless providers.

   
   

3. The state must choose the combination of project proposals with the

   lowest overall cost to the program. If an application to serve the same

   general project area proposes a project cost within 15% of the lowest cost

   proposal, the state can consider factors like speed to deployment and

   network speed.

   
   

4. An unlicensed fixed wireless provider can have more locations taken off the map if they purport to serve them – shrinking the potential market size.

   
   

5. Biden-era requirements not mandated by the bipartisan infrastructure law are repealed, including those related to labor, climate change, open access and net neutrality, middle class affordability, low-cost options and so-called “preferences” for non-traditional providers.

   
   

6. The notice saves for another day the fate of non-deployment funds, which

   some states would like to use for digital literacy, devices and workforce development, among other things.

   
   

The satellite, unlicensed fixed wireless and oddly, the cable industries were

thrilled with the changes. On the other hand, reactions from state broadband

offices, fiber providers and advocates have ranged from panic to resignation to

hope. Those who see the glass half full lean on the plain language of the

infrastructure bill, which requires priority broadband projects to get first dibs on

any project. A priority broadband project is defined as one where the network

“can easily scale speeds over time to:

• meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses; and 

• support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other

  advanced services.”

Optimists believe that LEO satellite service and unlicensed fixed wireless

services are unlikely to meet that standard, and in some cases might not even

meet the basic speed and latency requirements. LEO service suffers from severe

congestion problems, resulting in long waiting lists and high congestion fees,

while unlicensed fixed wireless is dependent on the availability of unlicensed

spectrum, which is no certainty given recent talks on Capitol Hill and at the FCC.

The burden is on the applicant to prove both that it is capable of achieving the

speed and latency benchmarks of the program, but also that it qualifies as a

priority broadband project. Optimists believe that satellite and unlicensed fixed

wireless providers will likely fail to meet one or both tests, allowing a state

broadband office to move forward with most of the fiber projects they had

planned for originally.

Others, like Matt Dunne, a former Vermont state legislator and the founder and

Executive Director of the Center for Rural Innovation, see a path for fiber if states

can access their own capital to provider greater match dollars for BEAD projects,

thereby lowering the cost. I love that idea, but I worry that this will only help the

wealthiest states, and that in an era of federal belt-tightening, many states are

too resource constrained to consider that option.

The glass half empty crowd views the focus on rewarding the lowest cost

projects either as a victory for slow, expensive and congested technologies that

will have to be upgraded in five years, or as a race to the bottom, resulting in

underbidding and ultimately, defaults. This of course, is what happened in the

infamous Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF. A full 36% of those projects

have either defaulted or have not yet been built. Just last week, Lumen defaulted

on 41,000 RDOF locations in 8 states – meaning they have now defaulted on

more than half of the locations it was awarded. Here’s a letter from January

2021, signed by 157 bipartisan, bicameral members of Congress that says, in

essence – RDOF has been a disaster. Do we really want a RDOF Redux when it

comes to the biggest one-time broadband investment in the nation’s history?

Fueling that pessimism is the fact that NTIA has the ability to reject any specific

state determination that a project meets or does not meet the definition of

“priority broadband project,” and also has a veto over any specific project or even

a single connection if it deems the price for that project to be excessive.

I tend to vacillate between being pessimistic and hopeful. The hyper-focus on

lowest cost above all is a recipe for disaster, and NTIA’s line-item veto over every

decision that could possibly result in an award to a fiber provider gives me pause.

There are also politics – to the extent that some states might consider submitting

a proposal that largely mimics what it had before – I worry that NTIA will reject it

just so it can show that the changes to the program are meaningful. That the

incoming but not yet confirmed NTIA administrator designate is a staffer for

supreme BEAD-hater Senator Ted Cruz is also not comforting.

My hopeful (and lawyerly) side points to the law, which the notice recognizes is

binding. The law requires that priority broadband projects get, well, priority, and

that those projects must “easily” scale to speeds to meet the evolving needs of

homes AND businesses, as well as provide a backbone for 5G, future wireless

service as well as other “advanced services,” like smart grid, AI, public safety

management, transportation, etc. It will be difficult for LEO and unlicensed fixed

wireless applicants to demonstrate that they can meet that standard. That

doesn’t mean those technologies won’t win any BEAD awards – they already had

in some states where building fiber was either geographically or financially

infeasible. Should states make a convincing case of what qualifies as a priority broadband project, I’m not sure that NTIA and Commerce Secretary Lutnick will

have the stomach for litigation. I’ve also been told that the Secretary just wants to

be able to declare victory and focus on things he actually cares about, like trade

wars and tariffs.

I’m also hopeful because I have had the privilege of meeting and working with

about a third of the state broadband officers, and I have found them to be smart,

hardworking public servants who are dedicated to providing the best broadband

for their residents. I consider it a miracle that only one SBO has left his post since

the Policy Notice was published. Many of them have asked for and gotten the

support of their governors and other state officials. I think that support will be

crucial for getting NTIA ultimately to approve their final grant proposals, but I

worry that those SBOs without that support or from Democratic-run states might

have a harder time.

What does this all mean for public broadband? To be sure, for those who have

already bid, or won provisional awards, this means further expenditure of time

and resources to rebid again. And the uncertainty around the future of non-

deployment funds hurts everyone, since much of that money appeared to be

headed towards programs that would result in more people using networks of all

kinds.

But the delays and changes in the BEAD program are not the only place where

the federal government has failed us (and I’m being bipartisan in that

assessment). In early May, President Trump illegally rescinded most of the

$2.75B Digital Equity Act grants, which would have supported state and private

digital navigator programs that work to get the unconnected connected. And just

over a year ago, Congress allowed the Affordable Connectivity Program to die.

That was the $30 a month broadband subsidy in which 23 million low-income US

households participated.

In a twisted way, the uncertainty around BEAD, non-deployment and Digital

Equity funds makes public broadband all the more critical. Without a doubt,

when all is said and done, the money is spent and the networks are (hopefully)

built, there will still be wide swaths of the country who are stuck with sub-optimal

and in some cases no broadband. If your city or town falls into that doughnut

hole, a community-owned network may be the fastest and best option.

Now you know what I think – what do you think? Is the policy notice just a bump

in the road or is it the road to RDOF 2.0? Were you a BEAD applicant before

and will you be one again? Is your community now more or less likely to

consider public broadband? Let’s open the floor for discussion.