- The Trump Administration’s insistence on low-cost BEAD proposals has left a $21 billion slush fund of leftover BEAD monies
- The NTIA is currently trying to decide what to do with these non-deployment funds
- Meanwhile, an industry consultant predicts there will be defaults in the BEAD program
Many stakeholders in the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program are too polite to call the program a “dud.” But they’re starting to question whether BEAD — since the Trump administration changed the rules in mid-2025 — is going to make a real difference in closing the digital divide.
There are concerns about the large amount of BEAD funds that are leftover. People are also questioning whether satellite will provide enough bandwidth over time. And at least one industry consultant predicts there will be defaults in the BEAD program.
First, there’s concern that only about half of the $42.5 billion that was allocated for BEAD is going toward connecting households. The remaining non-deployment funds are still in limbo-land.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has not yet said what it’s going to do with the nearly $21 billion in BEAD funds that will be left over after so many awards went to cheap satellite broadband instead of more expensive fiber. The law establishing BEAD made clear that non-deployment funds be spent on such things as broadband adoption and affordability. But the $21 billion in leftover funds is far more than Congress envisioned.
This year, NTIA took comments about the non-deployment funds, but then it failed to issue guidance on the matter on March 11, a deadline that the Trump administration had set for NTIA.
NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth issued a statement last week, prior to missing the March 11 deadline, saying, "We are taking additional time to review the comments and finalize our approach to ensure these funds are spent as efficiently and responsibly as possible."
Three Democratic members on the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote a letter to NTIA this week, reminding Roth that her agency is required by law to distribute the funds to the states and territories, and this can’t be overridden by an executive order or any other tactic.
“We remind you that executive orders issued by the President do not supersede federal law,” the Democrats wrote to Roth. “They certainly do not empower NTIA to impound billions of dollars—in full or on a state-by-state basis—that Congress authorized and appropriated to achieve specific policy outcomes, including universal connectivity.”
Roth cuts off D.C. from BEAD funds
In other BEAD-related news this week, Roth published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, boasting that NTIA was not giving a single penny of BEAD funds to the District of Columbia because NTIA determined that D.C. doesn’t have any locations that meet BEAD’s guidelines for being “unserved” with broadband.
“Today, we’re approving $0 in federal broadband funds for D.C.,” she wrote, adding, “This is what real oversight looks like.”
According to Roth’s op-ed, it did appear that the government group working on BEAD in D.C. was inept.
Fierce reached out to Gary Bolton, president of the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA), who indicated that the problem in D.C. was related to the national broadband map. He said, “FBA does not have specific comments regarding the Wall Street Journal article related to Washington, D.C. The FCC is responsible for providing accurate broadband mapping to support state broadband offices. While mapping has been complex and highly dynamic, it continues to improve with each iteration.”
What will become of BEAD locations connected with satellite?
This week, Bolton discussed the status of BEAD with industry consultant Carol Mattey in a webinar entitled, “Mission Accomplished – or Mission Abandoned? Life After BEAD”.
When asked if BEAD was “mission accomplished,” Mattey said, “I think, honestly, it is naive and unrealistic to declare mission accomplished. It remains to be seen whether it's mission abandoned or maybe mission readjusted.”
She noted that BEAD set the minimum broadband speeds at 100/20 Mbps, and she thinks consumers will quickly outgrow those speeds. “I think it’s fair to say that 20 megabits upstream is not going to be what consumers want a couple years down the road. Things change and what consumers need, what the use cases are, are so rapidly evolving, it is entirely predictable that there will be more upstream usages in the future.”
Bolton said that fiber is future-proofed for quite some time, as consumers use more bandwidth, but satellite is not.
Mattey said, “Obviously, as you say, fiber is going to get the job done. I feel as though both the cable and the fixed wireless industry will continue to evolve. And as we all know, fixed wireless is really a mixture of wireless and fiber. And the operators that are doing fixed wireless will continue to upgrade their networks and get fiber deeper into the field.”
She said it’s really the customers who receive satellite broadband where “it remains to be seen.”
Mattey also predicted, based on her past experience as a deputy director at the FCC, that there will be BEAD winners who default.
“Every program has defaults,” she said. “It's inevitable. Circumstances change. People that think they want to make a commitment find out for various reasons that things are not playing out the way they expected. I would be astonished if there aren't defaults in BEAD.”
In fact, as NTIA ponders how to spend the $21 billion in leftover BEAD funds, it may decide to reserve a portion of those non-deployment funds to ensure all households are connected in case the broadband provider chosen to serve them defaults.
BEAD vital statistics
NTIA has now approved the BEAD final proposals of 53 out of the 56 states and territories. After NTIA approves a state’s BEAD proposal, the award goes through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for grant processing and final sign-off. So far, NIST has approved 38 BEAD final plans.
Fiber deployments will account for about 63% of BEAD projects, while fixed wireless will account for about 12% and satellite will account for about 23%.
**After this story was published, the CTO for the District of Columbia published this article at DC.gov, explaining that locations awarded BEAD funds in the District were based on the current administration's FCC map.