BEAD Panel Urges ISPs Not to Panic Under New Rules
Providers must navigate compressed timelines, shifting rules, and new definitions of ‘priority’ broadband.
HOUSTON, June 26, 2025 – Internet providers have been left reassessing whether to compete, pivot, or walk away from the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.
At a Tuesday panel at the Broadband Communities Summit, industry experts urged Internet service providers not to panic, even as the federal broadband grant program becomes more compressed and harder to predict following major rule changes from the federal government.
“We can’t change our business model based on the rules of each grant program,” said Tyson Begly, chief financial officer at Highline, “So, we've got to continue our same strategy.”
FROM SPEEDING BEAD SUMMIT
Panel 1: How Are States Thinking About Reasonable Costs Now?
Panel 2: Finding the State Versus Federal Balance in BEAD
Panel 3: Reacting to the New BEAD NOFO Guidance
Panel 4: Building, Maintaining and Adopting Digital Workforce Skills
Despite the shake-up, Begley said he was “pretty optimistic” about his company’s ability to quickly revise and re-submit technical applications to comply with the new rules issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration earlier this month.
Hybrid network proposals may now be necessary
Hybrid network proposals, once discouraged by the NTIA, may now be necessary to stay competitive. But for companies that originally applied under fiber-only assumptions, retrofitting builds in a matter of weeks may be no easy task.
“We were all encouraged not to include a hybrid solution in our original application,” said Jade Piros de Carvalho, fiber expansion lead for Socket Fiber, and former director of the Kansas Office of Broadband Development. “Now, we're in this situation where, if you go back to original applicants who were provisional awardees and rescore them, they would be best suited to have some sort of hybrid solution if they want to win, but they didn't design their network that way.”
Another challenge was price. With satellite and unlicensed fixed wireless now fully in the mix, ISPs were under pressure to drive their per-location costs far lower than initially planned.
“People say to be competitive with satellite, you have to be somewhere within the $3,000 to $4,000 range per location,” said Philip Macres, principal at Klein Law Group.
Dropping the most expensive passings
One way to adapt: Drop the most expensive passings. Providers were no longer required to serve every location in a given area, and some may cut high-cost homes to stay below pricing thresholds, if the state broadband office allows it.
“We’re pulling in vendors, running new scenarios, seeing what else we can do that's going to make this more cost effective,” Macres said, saying sometimes that means balancing a wireless versus fiber approach, cutting out high-cost areas, or merging several applications into one.
Former BEAD program Director Evan Feinman emphasized that providers only need to be within 14.99% of the lowest-cost competitor to remain in the running, if they can win on secondary scoring criteria like speed or long-term scalability. And in some cases, it may make sense to pick up more locations – not fewer.
“You now can really benefit yourself by driving your cost per passing down, by picking up any clusters of density, even if they're ‘overbuilds,’ right near where you are, so long as you don't pass that 20% threshold,” Feinman said.
The key, panelists agreed, will be maintaining open communication with broadband offices and offering flexible solutions in advance of application windows.
“Stay in contact with your broadband office,” said Piros de Carvalho.
“Don’t overlook the obvious. A simple phone call to coordinate with your state broadband office takes 15 minutes,” Macres urged. ”You'll get some tremendous feedback during that call that you would have never expected to get from the state broadband office on how to improve your application for the next round.”
“Most importantly, tell the broadband office, ‘I'm here to partner with you and help you solve this problem,’” Feinman added.
