Broadband Experts Talk Next Steps After 65% Drop in BEAD-Eligible Locations
With an almost 65% reduction in BEAD-eligible locations over the past two years, broadband experts on Wednesday highlighted several challenges to deployment and funding that could affect the program's progress.
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"The question has kind of shifted to how this has changed since then, both due to progress of ISPs building out, but also from policy changes and operational changes with the bead program itself," said Alex Karras, a senior fellow at the New York Law School Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute, during a Broadband Breakfast webinar. With 65% of the BEAD program effectively accomplished without any actual use of the funds, "hopefully this means that there's more funding left for less locations," Karras said. "Then it's possible to get the best possible service" to the remaining 35%.
Breaking Point Solutions partner Glenn Fishbine questioned how many of those households are receiving broadband and whether they now live in areas no longer eligible for BEAD funding. He also raised concerns about the "tremendous number of low earth orbit solutions" proposed in some states. LEO is a good technology, he said, but "there's a lot of issues that haven't been studied or considered, and if we're looking only at the low-cost alternative, this should be implemented with caution, especially in areas that have no affordable functions."
Broadband Toolkit founder Randolph Luening acknowledged the "flood of [LEOs] that wouldn't have been there not too long ago," but there are also other technologies, such as fixed wireless access or cable. "As your environment changes, the solution changes," Luening said, adding that "in an ideal world, you would deploy fiber in the core of every build area" and satellite "in very low-density areas."