Advocacy Group Opposed to BEAD Restrictions on Opex

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4, 2025 – A rural broadband advocacy group is asking the Commerce Department to reverse new restrictions on its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment, saying it could prompt rural providers to back out.

Arielle Roth, head of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said last week that participants in NTIA’s $42.45 billion broadband expansion program would have to forego any federal subsidies to operate their BEAD networks. 

The Community Broadband Action Network said in an email bulletin Tuesday that the rule puts some rural ISPs in a bind: either accept BEAD deployment grants and expand to more homes and businesses, or turn down tentative BEAD awards to avoid jeopardizing subsidy support they need to continue serving remote areas.

“This is not a theoretical concern,” the group said. “We've talked with CBAN members who are reconsidering their BEAD applications because they cannot afford to jeopardize the Enhanced ACAM support that keeps their current operations afloat.”

Enhanced ACAM is an operational subsidy managed by the Federal Communications Commission. Started in 2023, it’s providing $18 billion through 2038 for rural providers to operate and upgrade their networks.

CBAN members include rural ISPs, the communities they operate in, other advocacy organizations, and others. The group advocates for locally operated broadband in rural areas.

The group urged NTIA to limit its restriction to duplicative construction grants and allow BEAD participants to get opex support later on, something it said would be necessary in some of the sparsely populated areas BEAD targets. 

The group also asked the agency to confirm that ISPs already receiving E-ACAM can continue receiving that cash while using BEAD grants to expand their networks.

NTCA, a trade group that represents rural broadband providers, had similar concerns last week.

“There are many rural locations where providers are already receiving ongoing support, and we certainly hope and presume that nothing in this condition would disrupt existing ongoing support in an area merely because a provider hopes to leverage BEAD funding – along with substantial private capital and matching funds – to upgrade an existing network in that area,” NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said in an Oct. 29 statement.

NTIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Roth said the move was intended to prevent grants from going to projects that were likely to default in the future.

“If a provider expects to come back to the government for more money later, that’s a flashing warning sign that they are at a heightened risk of default,” she said. “Congress envisioned ‘future-proof’ networks that would stand on their own, not require permanent federal subsidies or future bailouts.”

For CBAN, the poor economics of serving remote areas mean that some level of opex subsidy support will be required for rural parts of the country to have broadband access comparable to denser areas. The group said fiber providers were more likely to decline tentative awards over the issue.

NTIA hasn’t approved any state’s draft bidding results, the final step before money can go out the door and projects can get underway, and is asking states to push down spending before it does so. The agency changed BEAD rules in June to remove a Biden-era preference for fiber and make it easier for fixed wireless and satellite ISPs to compete for funding.

But the tentative results have still favored fiber, which would serve nearly two-thirds of their BEAD locations. Low-earth orbit satellite from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Amazon’s Kuiper are slated to serve about 20 percent of BEAD locations, and fixed wireless would take about 11 percent.

Fixed wireless and LEO “have their place, they cannot match fiber's reliability, capacity, and long-term value,” CBAN wrote.