I’ve written a lot about how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos convinced Republicans to redirect billions in taxpayer money away from future-proof fiber optic upgrades, and toward their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband networks they’d already planned to deploy. Curious behavior for two extremely-rich gentlemen who both repeatedly claim to loathe subsidies and corporate welfare.
The short version: the billionaires convinced Republicans to retool the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program (created by the 2021 infrastructure bill) in a way that weakened oversight standards, eliminated enforcement of stuff like broadband affordability, speed, and equitable deployment, and shoveled taxpayers toward more expensive, slower, less reliable satellite service.
After doing billionaires a giant favor, Republicans proudly claimed they’d “saved taxpayers around $21 billion” in “non-deployment funds.” The problem: Congress specifically earmarked this money for broadband deployment, so states were understandably annoyed at the missed opportunity.
For much of the last year, states and scattered lawmakers have been begging the Trump NTIA to offer guidance on what is going to happen to this $21 billion. Initially I think they hoped they could just pocket or repurpose that money. When they realized they couldn’t get away with it, they announced last week they’d vaguely be opening additional BEAD funding rounds to try and put the money to work.
Former FCC official Gigi Sohn, illustrated how stupid this all is over at a post at LinkedIn:
“After proudly cutting back on BEAD-eligible locations in its “Benefit of the Bargain” and “Best and Final” bidding rounds, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has now decided that part of the money it allegedly “saved” will go back to deploy broadband in the places that it nixed previously.”
But there’s still no meaningful guidance on what any of this means (which is required by law). And the BEAD standards have been so altered and twisted, there’s nothing saying this doesn’t just result in billions more money being funneled to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for substandard LEO satellite service that’s expensive and increasingly congested (because it wasn’t designed to be a mainstream option).
The bipartisan infrastructure law that created BEAD says that any extra BEAD money left over after physically connecting people must be used to improve broadband maps (which telecoms hate because it highlights market failure), install low-cost connectivity in multiple dwelling units like low income apartment complexes, or support broadband adoption programs. All of which the Trump administration claim are “woke.”
Sohn notes that under the law the Trump NTIA needs to provide clear guidance for the funds. Just ambiguously stating that money can still be maybe used for broadband doesn’t cut it:
“NTIA Administrator Roth promised a Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that she would issue non-deployment guidance this summer. This partial guidance should not serve as a promise kept. The last day of summer is September 22. Tick Tock.”
The annoyance at the Trump NTIA is increasingly bipartisan, as politicians in states like Texas realize this whole program was mired with all sorts of billionaire favoritism, delays, and weird new bureaucratic obstacles that significantly eroded what could have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand affordable, fast broadband.
I think this hasn’t been a bigger scandal (yet) in part because states don’t want to speak out and risk not getting billions in funds. So a lot of folks I see in telecom policy are privately furious or disgusted, but publicly pretending that any of this still makes any coherent sense.
It’s important to remember that Republicans spent all last election season complaining that this BEAD program was a bureaucratic hellscape they were going to immediately fix once in office.
Instead the Trump admin redirected billions to billionaires, eliminated any provisions requiring the broadband be equitably deployed and affordable, hijacked $21. billion for what they clearly hoped would be their own personal use, and created years of additional delays due to corruption and bureaucracy.
Folks like Ezra Klein, who helped Republicans parrot BEAD concerns in 2024, have been nowhere to be found since. In fact none of the “abundance” folks have made a single solitary peep about how badly the opportunity to build much-needed affordable broadband infrastructure has been bungled by Trump Incorporated.