Satellite Providers and WISPs Likely BEAD Rules Winners: Levin
Satellite broadband providers, especially Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper service, are likely the big winners in the Commerce Department’s rewriting of the BEAD program rules, New Street’s Blair Levin told investors Monday. Smaller providers that use unlicensed spectrum to offer broadband also won, he said. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, slammed the revised rules that the Trump administration released Friday (see 2506060052).
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Senate Commerce Committee member Sen. Jacky Rosen, D- Nev., said Friday night that she will place holds on NTIA administrator nominee Arielle Roth and Trump’s other Commerce Department nominees for roles “that oversee or deal with broadband policy in any way, and block their expedited confirmation, until Nevada gets its BEAD funding.”
The result of the changes was mixed for major carriers, Levin said. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile made “small gains” in the ability to use BEAD for fixed wireless access, but because of the move away from fiber, AT&T and Verizon “are unlikely to have the gains they would have had if the Biden-era rules had stayed in place,” he said.
“In a sense, the shift to satellite is a pure windfall; that is, the new rules and the shift in dollars will not cause any change in satellite deployment” and will reduce “new dollars (and jobs) going into network deployments in rural areas,” Levin said. “We also wonder whether it will have any material impact on adoption; that is, with no requirements for lower pricing, why would anyone who is not currently buying satellite service choose to buy it in the future just because the government subsidized Starlink and/or Kuiper?”
Rosen said she's “beyond outraged that the Trump Administration has moved the goal post yet again and rescinded Nevada’s approval to get the BEAD funding I secured to connect the hardest-to-reach communities in our state to high-speed internet.” It’s “a slap in the face to rural communities that need access to high-speed internet.”
Roth has been awaiting floor action since April, when Rosen and 11 other Senate Commerce Democrats voted against advancing her because of what they viewed as unsatisfactory answers on her plans to revamp BEAD (see 2504090037).
Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., likewise argued that forcing “states to throw out years of careful planning and restart their selection process is bureaucratic whiplash that will delay broadband deployment by at least another year, maybe more, leaving rural families and small businesses disconnected while politicians play games with their future.”
Panel Republicans’ budget reconciliation proposal requiring governments that receive BEAD funding to pause enforcing state-level AI rules, an apparent alternative to HR-1’s 10-year federal preemption of such laws (see 2506060029), will also ensure “the broadband Americans desperately need will remain out of reach,” Cantwell said in a statement.
In contrast, House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said the new BEAD guidance “will accelerate deployment and provide certainty to states, as we continue our work to connect every American to fast and reliable broadband. I look forward to getting shovels in the ground and delivering on Republicans’ promise to close the digital divide, ensuring rural Americans can access the internet they need to fully enjoy and participate in the 21st century economy.”
The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition warned Monday that the rules may restrict anchor institutions too much. While the administration reaffirms “the statutory requirement that anchor institutions be prioritized for BEAD funds, NTIA’s latest guidance risks narrowing the definition of which anchor institutions qualify, potentially excluding critical institutions from receiving funding.”
'Course Correction'
The revised rules are a “dramatic midstream course correction,” wrote Alexis Schrubbe, director of the Internet Innovation Initiative at the University of Chicago Data Science Institute. “NTIA is framing the update as a necessary return to the letter of the [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] statute after a period of policy ‘misdirection,’” she said Friday. “For the state broadband offices, communities, and partners that followed NTIA’s original playbook in good faith, the message is clear: the new administration simply doesn't give a hoot.”
WISPA President David Zumwalt applauded the revised rules, which made changes that the group has long sought (see 2312290026). “The updated guidance disincentivizes wasteful overbuilding, and broadens the slate of solution providers -- particularly those that prioritize the most cost-effective technologies suited to each location.”
Joe Kane, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's director of broadband and spectrum policy, said the administration has more work ahead of it. “Saving money on deployment is a first step toward a more rational broadband policy, but NTIA should quickly issue its promised further guidance on ‘allowable non-deployment activities,’” he said. “Nondeployment barriers, such as lack of affordability and adoption, account for the vast majority of the digital divide.”