BEAD 2.0 Generating Big Savings, NTIA Head Says

State broadband officials said they're still waiting for word from NTIA on whether that excess cash can be used for non-deployment needs. Meanwhile, several indicated that even after BEAD there will be homes in their states that lack access to broadband. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez was critical of the BoB version of BEAD.

Roth said while states received “considerable deference” in BEAD about what qualified as priority broadband projects, some projects were too expensive. In those cases, NTIA is seeking more information, and in “a small minority of circumstances” it's asking providers to rebid with a best and final offer, she said. “Our role is to be good stewards of the money." She didn’t give specific numbers of what qualifies as excessive cost.

Roth said NTIA is “quite pleasantly surprised” by the 43 BoB final proposals. She said rates of participation in the BoB round have been higher than they were in the final applications received previously. A priority in NTIA’s final review includes ensuring providers that win BEAD awards won't default, Roth said. Providers also need to understand BEAD “is the pot of broadband money,” and participants won’t see another.

Gomez said BEAD was in “a race to the bottom,” with deployment costs being prioritized above everything. “It’s penny-wise, pound-foolish,” incentivizing deployment of technologies that won’t meet demand, she added. Gomez said the BEAD approach seems to contradict the Trump administration’s goal of making the U.S. the global leader in AI.

Hill Talk

BEAD funds shouldn’t automatically go to the cheapest technology, but instead the best long-term solution, said House Communications Subcommittee Chief Minority Counsel Parul Desai. BEAD was on track to get shovels in the ground months ago, but now has been delayed, Desai said. Oversight “is going to be important,” and its BoB restructuring is inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the law, she added.

Duncan Rankin, Senate Commerce Committee Republican senior adviser, said if the goal is connecting the unconnected fastest, fiber isn’t necessarily the best choice. With many low-cost broadband plans being rolled out after the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program, the best and highest use of BEAD money left over isn’t necessarily spending on broadband price subsidization, he said.

Asked about how to balance stakeholders’ needs in creating that spectrum pipeline, Rankin said the most efficient route would be NTIA having more flexibility to repack federal incumbents without handcuffs. “You have to leave options on the table” and not have particular bands or parts of bands carved out as not to be touched, but the defense industry is strongly in favor of such carveouts, he said. Sierra Fuller, legislative assistant to Senate Commerce member Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said the military has concerns about being pushed out of certain bands used for defense technologies. She said more effort needs to be spent on building trust with agencies.

Guilia Leganski, House Energy & Commerce chief counsel, said there’s a pressing need for a federal AI standard. She said the patchwork of privacy bills differing from state to state is “drowning” companies with compliance costs. “We can't make the same mistake with AI,” she said.

State of States

Georgia Broadband Program Executive Director Jessica Simmons said the state's final proposal has a $310 million price tag, compared with the $1.3 billion the state was allocated. Kentucky Broadband Development Executive Director Meghan Sandfoss said Kentucky received bids for 87,000 eligible locations, and costs came in about a third of the $1.1 billion the state was allocated.

Minnesota Broadband Development Executive Director Bree Maki said 22 ISPs bid on 52,000 of the state’s 76,000 eligible locations. The state then went into direct negotiations to get the other 24,000 covered. She said Minnesota hopes to see “shovels-in-ground” deployment work starting by late spring 2026.

Simmons said that while all 120,000 BEAD-eligible locations in Georgia will be served, as many as 20,000 unserved locations aren't BEAD eligible. She said the state is trying to come up with strategies for addressing them. A possibility is that at least some of them are in areas that get passed by BEAD deployment projects and get taken care of that way, Simmons said.

The state officials said they were confident that NTIA would meet its 90-day deadline for reviewing and approving states' final applications. Sandfoss said one potential problem is a government shutdown. While NTIA stays open if the government closes, a shutdown of the National Institute of Standards and Technology could disrupt its review of states' final proposals, she said.

Roth said NTIA has “all hands on deck” as it goes through states' final BEAD proposals, and getting those approved on time is a priority.

TechExpo Notebook

National Economic Council Deputy Director Robin Colwell said that while licensed spectrum has received particular policy attention in recent months, the White House also is looking for more spectrum access for Wi-Fi. She said the revised budget reconciliation bill, which requires creation of an 800 MHz spectrum auction pipeline, needs to be focused on licensed spectrum because that generates revenue.

Colwell said there is no intention to designate the 6 GHz band for auction. Given the significant fights in the first Trump administration that resulted in it and the 5.9 GHz band being designated for unlicensed use, “we’re not trying to fix what’s not broken,” she said. One complication is the reconciliation bill fences off other significant bands that can’t be touched for auction, she said.---Gomez warned that the U.S. could face challenges at the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference as it loses soft power internationally due to the country's doing away with programs like USAID. Adversary nations see an opportunity to gain the support of delegates the U.S. often has relied on in the past for winning at WRCs, she said.---A uniform, national regulatory approach for broadband makes sense, but preempting state laws regulating broadband might be legally challenging, FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty said. She said any national approach needs to include a light regulatory touch. A big hurdle to any preemption of state laws is case law following the FCC’s 2018 order undoing net neutrality, she said, but added that it remains a legally unsettled area.---Cogeco CEO Frederic Perron said even though incumbent local exchange carriers in Canada have converted to fiber networks, Cogeco is out-competing them in adding subscribers. That’s driven in large part by Cogeco's marketing, which describes its network as fiber-powered, he said, noting only the end of its network is hybrid fiber-coaxial. The marketing makes a big difference to perception, Perron said. He said the cable industry needs to focus on AI use to improve the customer experience in areas like installation and repair.