We’re Pouring Billions into a Broadband Program Doomed to Fail | Opinion

The federal government is pouring $42.5 billion into funding broadband infrastructure across the country so that all Americans can get online. But five months after we should have broken ground on the new broadband networks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick hit reset on the entire program. The new rules he released won’t bring us any closer to closing the digital divide—in fact, they’ll undo years of progress toward that goal.

The program is called BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment), and the new guidance for it forces all states—red and blue—to redo the results of years of planning on a draconian 90-day timeline. Many states had already selected internet providers based on thoughtful evaluations that considered local areas’ needs. Now, all of those choices are moot, and states are scrambling to make new ones. Worse, providers must now bid on projects nationwide all at once, undoing the previous region-by-region approach that let them realistically assess where they could build.

We’re about to see a perfect storm of rushed decisions from states and providers who don’t have all the information they need. The likely outcome? Worse quality internet at higher prices for consumers.

We’ve seen this all before—reckless execution leading to poor outcomes and defaults in earlier broadband programs. BEAD was supposed to avoid those mistakes, not repeat them.

The timeline crunch is bad enough, but the substance of the new guidelines makes things worse. Under the updated rules, so long as project proposals meet basic speed and operational requirements, states can only compare them based on their upfront costs. If proposed costs are very similar, states can assess network quality, too—but only then. Other relevant metrics—like prices for consumers, data caps, and whether the technology suits a particular location—aren’t even in the mix. This isn’t neutral decision-making: it’s the inability to quality-check the broadband the government is buying.

Think of this in any other circumstance. Imagine you were building the house where your family would grow up, and in choosing a contractor, you had to go with the cheapest upfront quote. Not the company’s track record, proposed designs, or even whether the project would violate your HOA. That’s what’s happening right now to this $42.5 billion program that’s meant to bring America online.

Under the original BEAD rules, states chose projects by assessing upfront cost, but they also factored in things like consumer price, type of network, data caps, and even community preferences. States need to be able to seriously consider these kinds of factors when making their decisions. Would you rather live in a house built on the cheap or one that stands the test of time?

Lutnick’s new rules come dressed up as tech neutrality: the notion that every type of technology should have a fair shot in competing to provide subsidized internet service. BEAD’s original guidelines prioritized the gold standard fiber-optic cable because the bipartisan law that funded it directed the money toward advanced technologies able to keep up with future needs. This new guidance is forcing states into a race to the bottom for infrastructure that should last us for generations.

There are broadband technologies cheaper than fiber, but not every technology makes sense in every place. Fixed wireless broadband can be obstructed by physical barriers like mountains or heavy foliage. Low-Earth orbit satellite service can reach the most remote households but can’t serve dense populations, so providers raise prices to discourage uptake in crowded areas. States took these tradeoffs into account when drafting their original broadband plans.

Yes, we should be mindful of overspending on deployment, but we also need to consider details beyond day one costs. With these new rules, states can’t fully assess the long-term benefits of the projects they’re funding. Generally, fiber is costlier upfront but lasts for decades and supports other technologies, whereas satellites rack up steep maintenance costs through regular replacement launches. Lower-bandwidth technologies often can’t scale to future needs.

Our digital future won’t be secured by accepting the cheapest bid—it takes thoughtful deployment of the right technologies in the right places. States know their situations best and can execute that careful deployment, as long as they can choose technologies based on factors beyond just the federal dollars they’ll cost. The new guidance needs to be revised to give them back the ability to do that. Meaningfully quality-checking the broadband we buy is not a distraction—it’s how we avoid taxpayer waste.

Lutnick isn’t wrong to want to streamline and speed up BEAD, but the way he’s gone about it will leave Americans worse off. States are best positioned to determine our broadband future—and Lutnick still has time to put them back in the driver’s seat before we’ve thrown all our BEAD dollars away.

Jessica Dine is a policy analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute and Wireless Future, where she focuses on a range of issues including broadband access and adoption, spectrum policy, and competition.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.