Fiber Bias, Not Tech Neutrality, Delays BEAD Success

At today’s confirmation hearing for Arielle Roth, President Trump’s nominee to head the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, some Senators expressed concerns that removing the bias toward fiber deployment in the $42 billion Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program will delay getting broadband to people.

This argument conflates two separate issues: the timeline for approving a state’s BEAD plan and the timeline for actually closing the digital divide with BEAD dollars. If we want all Americans to get connected as soon as possible, we need a realistic approach that matches the time and money we have with the solutions available. That means embracing tech neutrality and deploying broadband efficiently to ensure there’s also sufficient funding for broadband adoption.

While it is true that states have put a lot of work into complying with the mandate for a fiber-biased BEAD plan, the fact that program reforms would require revisiting some of that work does not mean it would delay broadband access itself. In fact, it could accelerate it.

Fiber’s impressive capacity comes at the expensive of the time and money needed to string or tunnel it to the relatively rural areas that contain the bulk of BEAD locations.

For example, consider a state that has produced a BEAD plan that would spend exorbitant sums, say $77,000 per location, on fiber deployment. Even if that plan were fully greenlit today, it would still be slated for completion four years from now.

If that same state took a step back to implement a tech-neutral approach to BEAD, it would likely switch some locations from being served by fiber to being served by fixed-wireless access and low-earth-orbit satellites. These technologies can often be deployed more quickly since they don’t require building physical infrastructure all the way to an end-user’s home. In many cases, these technologies enable households to get online in a matter of days, not years. In such cases, the “delay” of reforming the state’s BEAD paperwork would result in its citizens getting broadband service sooner, not later.

Additionally, the time advantages of tech neutrality go beyond deployment speed. More efficient deployment would enable BEAD to become a program that addresses the major causes of the digital divide: lack of interest and affordability. NTIA’s own data show less than three percent of people who don’t have Internet access cite unavailability as the reason. Instead, the majority cite lack of need or interest, and 15 percent cite lack of affordability.

Pouring BEAD funds into pricey fiber deployment means burning cash that could quickly get people online by tackling affordability and digital skills gaps. For most people on the wrong side of digital divide today, pushing forward with the current plan will mean they are left behind by the biggest broadband program to date. That’s delay and then some.

We have two options:

• Stick with the status quo, waiting years for costly fiber deployments to slowly reach remote areas, only to find that most offline households still either can’t afford or don’t adopt broadband.
• Make BEAD tech neutral and cap per-location costs, enabling many homes to get connected sooner and preserving sufficient funds for digital literacy, affordability programs, and other adoption efforts.

If confirmed, Ms. Roth should keep BEAD focused on getting people connected, not sacrifice our chance to close the digital divide to protect the paperwork states have done so far. Reforming BEAD to be tech neutral with capped deployment costs while explicitly enabling affordability, digital literacy, and digital navigator programs, would accelerate the timeline for closing the digital divide. The real delay isn’t reform, it’s fiber bias.