Advocates for broadband access say changes to the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program that seek to lower costs of internet expansion will result in lower quality connectivity for areas that need it.
The $42.45 billion federal grant program aims to connect every American to high-speed internet by funding partnerships to build infrastructure, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Advocates and providers also have mixed reactions to President Donald Trump’s discontinuation of the Digital Equity Act, which allocated $2.75 billion to teach digital skills and equip underserved and unserved populations with technology.
PBS reported in May that Trump announced on his social network Truth Social he will be ending the program, saying it was “racist” and “illegal” and included “woke handouts based on race.”
“The thing is, you can build a network and you can tell people that it’s available in their community,” said Jon Willow, co-founder and board president of the Community Broadband Action Network, which seeks to educate people trying to create or improve locally owned broadband access,
“But in many communities in Iowa, up to 15% of the people have never owned a computer. And in many communities in Iowa, up to 15% of people don’t have home internet service. So if you’ve never had the internet at home and you’ve never had a computer, just getting you a connection isn’t going to change your life. And the original BEAD program knew that. And the goal of the original BEAD program wasn’t just to build a bunch of infrastructure. It was to move the people of the United States forward technologically, so that we could be competitive, and we could have skills on par with others in the western world.”
Jeremy Carroll, general manager of Manning Municipal Utilities , a municipally owned utility in western Iowa, said it was hard for him to see the value of that fund to help educate people.
“A lot of the folks that needed education were past the average working age,” he said. “There were a lot of elderly folks that were retired or nearing retirement that aren’t going back into the workforce. … I don’t see a big issue with it going away.”
Curtis Dean, executive director of the Community Broadband Action Network, said the organization has been doing digital equity work for three years in Iowa and in southwest Iowa under a grant it received from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, which was money that was sourced from the Google Foundation.
“We’ve touched over I believe around 200 people in southwest Iowa with training and skills development and devices,” he said. “And that grant ends this month and our full-time digital navigator will be laid off.”
One of the big industry concerns about Trump administration changes to BEAD are the new rules surrounding the Benefit of the Bargain BEAD program, Dean said.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration said the program included “reforms that will remove rules favoring particular technologies and eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens.” The NTIA said in its policy notice it was eliminating rules that prioritized certain technologies. NTIA did not return a request for comment on BEAD policy changes.
“The states are supposed to take the lowest bidder,” Dean said. “The fear has been that it’s going to mean that satellite is going to end up getting all the money and in my opinion … satellite is not adequate. It’s not future proof – although it’s great and it has its place, it should not be seen as a replacement for wired networks.”
The most “future proof” technology out there is fiber, Dean said.
“Because fiber can do a gigabit today,” he said. “You can do 10 gigabits today. Actually it can do 25 gigabits today. Depending on the technology they use, they’re working on being able to deploy 50 gigabit and 100 gigabit. So you can see, it’s going to scale a lot better. … Even if our demands as consumers go up 10 times in the next 10 years, the fiber will handle it. And there’s a real question whether satellite can handle that or other types of technology can handle that.”
