States Likely Will Stay the BEAD Course Pending Program Changes

California, which was awarded $1.86 billion in BEAD funding, has spent thousands of hours building its program, said Ernesto Falcon, program manager-Communications and Broadband Policy Branch at the California Public Utilities Commission. Until told otherwise, "we are following the rules we were given," Falcon said. That includes starting its subgrantee application process next Tuesday, he said. Assertions of BEAD rules changes "aren't relevant until they were to happen. It has taken so much effort and time to get ready. To have people wait on a speculative change is not workable." He said California expects to start construction this year.

An Ohio Department of Development spokesperson emailed that the state and its BroadbandOhio are "closely tracking potential changes to federal broadband policies and funding." He said Ohio's "commitment remains the same -- ensuring every Ohioan has access to reliable, high-speed internet through a top-tier broadband network."

Feinman's letter predicting BEAD changes also speculated that some form of NTIA-imposed pause was ahead -- and that's already happening, with Delaware, Louisiana and Nevada awaiting final approval from Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and no guidance forthcoming, said Sarah Morris of Waxman Strategies. Morris, who served at NTIA in the Biden administration, said any BEAD changes that would affect how states run their subgrantee processes could set some states' deployment work back by years.

The most important thing state broadband offices should do now is press lawmakers to urge Commerce that they should be afforded flexibility to move forward, consultant Carol Mattey said in an email. That's especially true in states with Republican governors and members of Congress, she added. That flexibility should allow them to make "some surgical changes to effectuate the desired policies, but not [be] forced to completely re-do their subgrantee selection process, which would cause further delay."

Jim Rogers, CEO of consultancy Mission Broadband, said he's hearing from states that they're communicating with their NTIA representatives, but they remain unclear where the program is going. Absent new information, states should follow existing deadlines and rules, he said. “Nobody wants to miss a deadline because they think the deadline or the rule might change."

NTIA likely won't make wholesale changes that delay timelines or unwind work that states have done, Rogers said, but some requirements could change, such as on wage conditions. He said whatever tweaks NTIA makes ought not force states to go back and redo parts of their state BEAD programs. Given GOP criticism during the Biden administration that BEAD wasn't moving fast enough, the Trump administration presumably would want to speed up the program, he said.

It seems unlikely that NIST approvals for Delaware, Nevada and Louisiana will come before a permanent head of NTIA is seated, Rogers said. Greg Guice, chief policy officer for consultancy Vernonburg Group, noted NTIA already has approved initial plans of all states, so, at a minimum, they are authorized to move forward under existing rules. He said there's bipartisan interest in states going ahead on deployment, and the smartest move for the administration would be to loosen obligations that don't affect timelines but might help attract more bidders, so that it isn't accused of further delaying the program.

The BEAD changes signaled by Commerce and proposed by the Streamlining Program Efficiency and Expanding Deployment (Speed) for BEAD Act, from House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Richard Hudson of North Carolina and other GOP lawmakers, "threaten to disrupt" the program's momentum, wrote Dustin Loup, Ready.net senior director-policy development and analysis. The proposed changes could cause "delays, funding inefficiencies, and weakened broadband expansion efforts" and "risk undermining state-led strategies, limiting flexibility, and weakening BEAD’s overall impact," he said last week. Loup argued against such proposed changes as those preventing states from considering price as a scoring factor in subgrantee selection and setting per-location spending caps.