BEAD Faces Supply Chain Spike and Near-Certain Defaults as Program Shifts to Construction, Panelists Said
Fiber captured 63 percent of planned locations nationally, with satellite taking 23 percent under revised program rules.
WASHINGTON, March 18, 2026 â The shift toward technology neutrality in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program created winners across multiple technologies, panelists said Wednesday at Broadband Breakfast's BEAD Implementation 2026 summit, while raising new questions about defaults, supply chain costs, and long-term network sustainability.
Under Benefit-of-the-Bargain changes, revised BEAD program rules issued in June 2025, low-earth orbit satellite providers captured roughly 23 percent of planned locations nationally and fixed wireless claimed nearly 15 percent. Fiber took 63 percent, said Greg Bathrick, area vice president of commercial development at Calix, a broadband software and equipment company serving roughly 1,000 rural providers. Hybrid fiber-coaxial cable networks, which deliver broadband over a combination of fiber and coaxial cable, took the remainder.
Chris Disher, co-founder of Cajun Broadband, a Louisiana-based internet provider, said fiber remains the strongest long-term technology choice for BEAD-funded locations. Fiber tested at 22.3 petabytes per second in Japan, he said, a speed 23 million times faster than a gigabit connection. His company plans to serve 14,000 homes across 3.5 million feet of fiber in Louisiana.
But his fiber suppliers raised prices 40 percent in recent weeks before construction has even begun, Disher said, a cost spike that could force providers to scale back network designs and limit long-term capacity.
Carl Guardino, vice president of government affairs and policy at Tarana Wireless, a next-generation fixed wireless access technology company, said his company's equipment delivers 1.6 Gigabits per second (Gbps) at 13 milliseconds of latency in non-line-of-sight conditions, meaning locations where no direct visual path exists between the transmitter and receiver.
A second-generation product released in September 2025 doubled the capacity of the first, Guardino said. The company serves 275,000 families across 48 states through 415 internet service provider partners, with a third generation expected to double capacity again within three years.
The question is not which technology wins, Guardino said, but whether every funded location receives affordable, reliable, high-speed, low-latency, and scalable service.
Rick Cimerman, vice president for external and state affairs at NCTA, the Internet and Television Association, said hybrid fiber-coaxial networks were a significant beneficiary of the rule changes in densely populated northeastern states. Delaware saw 18 percent of its BEAD locations go to cable networks, he said.
Cimerman said BEAD should be a one-time government investment, with networks sustained by customer revenues thereafter.
"You can't keep going back to the trough," he said.
Madeleine Chang, director of policy at the Satellite Industry Association, which represents more than 50 space and satellite companies including Amazon but not SpaceX, said the number of low-Earth orbit satellites has grown from fewer than 5,000 in 2020 to more than 12,000 today.
Starlink is now profitable and Amazon's low-earth orbit constellation is approaching commercial availability, with additional constellations planned for launch, Chang said. BEAD covers terminal costs, which subscribers would otherwise pay $300 to $500 out of pocket, she said.
Bathrick said 90 to 95 percent of BEAD funding goes toward outdoor plant construction â the cables, conduit, and physical infrastructure deployed outside buildings. That up-front investment, he said, is why the choice of technology matters so much over the long term.
Defaults are a near certainty, multiple panelists said. Guardino said NTIA should set aside a portion of the $21 billion in unallocated BEAD savings as a reserve fund. Cimerman cited a report by the Advanced Communication Law and Policy Institute at New York Law School estimating that as many as one million locations nationally may remain unserved even after BEAD buildout is complete.
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