NTIA Must Get Back on Track and Finalize BEAD: FBA Chief

FBA applauded the Trump administration for trying to simplify the BEAD program. “Some of the obligations in the funding were onerous, and there’s a lot of red tape,” Bolton said. “It has been fumbled, unfortunately. We could have had shovels in the ground, and we’re going to lose another year. … It’s disappointing.”

The people left behind live in states like West Virginia, which had a plan to get fiber to everyone in an area that “desperately needs jobs and education and economic development.” The state has announced a pause in its BEAD process as it revamps its program to be more in line with the White House's changes (see 2504010008). Rural Americans “are the big losers” as BEAD stalls, Bolton said.

However, the Commerce Department can get BEAD “back on track,” Bolton said. Acting NTIA Administrator Adam Cassady said last week that the agency is working hard to finalize changes to the program to make it “tech-neutral” (see 2505270045).

But Bolton also said BEAD must be kept in perspective.

There are about 1,400 fiber providers in the U.S., and fiber is “where private investment is going,” he said. The 5.5 million homes that BEAD will reach are “very important,” because “these are the communities and homes that have been left behind.” Helping reach them is the kind of work “government is supposed to do."

About 140 million U.S. homes and businesses need to be connected, Bolton said. The $42 billion available through BEAD “sounds like a big number” but is much less than the hundreds of billions of dollars that companies are investing in their networks, he said. “The thing that gets lost in all this BEAD talk is where private companies and public companies are investing their own money."

For example, AT&T is committed to passing 50 million homes with fiber by the end of 2029, Bolton noted. The company has discussed how “fiber is accelerating their business case by two years, and so they’re able to get faster penetration, significantly higher average revenue per user, and reduce their churn.” Wall Street's message is that the first provider with fiber “wins” the broadband and mobile customer, he said. “The first rule of wireless is get it out of the air and into the ground at the first available point."

Hawaiian Telcom plans to invest its money and government funds to make Hawaii the first state to connect every home and business with fiber, targeting completion by the end of next year, he said. Other companies, including Verizon, Frontier, T-Mobile, Consolidated Communications, Ziply Fiber, TDS and Google Fiber, are also committing money to build out fiber, he added.

Workforce Cuts

Bolton said he’s hopeful that staff reductions at the NTIA and FCC won’t affect fiber deployments (see 2505230011). Making government more efficient is a worthy goal, he said, and “I have to trust” that the leaders of both agencies are “doing the right thing on making sure that they have the team they need to be able to move the chains forward.”

FBA welcomes the FCC’s focus on reducing regulations and speeding copper retirements, Bolton said. “We’ve had a wireline technology that’s been obsolete for 25 years,” he said. “Every dollar that’s being spent on these old legacy networks is a dollar not being spent on the future.”

Bolton expressed concern about the rise of quantum computing, which will “change everything.” At risk is the data of all Americans, he added. “The current encryption on the internet will be cracked.” But quantum networking is also the answer and will provide “ultra-secure communications,” he said. “That’s going to be critical for protecting our nation, protecting our personal financial information."

AI will be revolutionary as well, Bolton said, adding that it's “a huge priority” for the administration. Every nation wants “AI supremacy,” but “AI only works if you have fiber." Data centers require fiber connections, as do home applications that use AI, he said.