Broadband Industry Coalesces in Support of ‘SPEED for BEAD’

WASHINGTON, March 10, 2025 – Industry officials – including those representing the fiber industry – are galvanizing in support of Rep. Richard Hudson’s SPEED for BEAD, introduced last Wednesday by the North Carolina Republican.

The measure’s introduction coincided with a hearing by the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that Hudson chairs, and an announced review of the BEAD program by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose department administers the $42.5 billion program.

Among the industry groups that announced their support for Hudson’s measure – which drops the work “equity” from the program and renames it the Broadband Expansion, Access and Deployment – include ACA Connects, the Fiber Broadband Association, INCOMPAS, NTCA - The Rural Broadband Association, USTelecom, WISPA, and NCTA - The Internet & Television Association.

The core of Hudson’s “SPEED for BEAD” bill isn’t about changing the technologies being deployed for the program, argued Fiber Broadband Association CEO Gary Bolton, but about addressing regulatory restrictions, including a letter of credit requirement as well as other rules.

“There is not going to be anyone that doesn’t put fiber as far as they can,” Bolton told Broadband Breakfast in an interview.

Rather, the question of whether a state uses fiber for every location, or supplement fiber with wireless and satellite will depend on the money it has available. Bolton highlighted the aspect of Hudson’s bill that allows “a prospective subgrantee to remove [a location that]  would unreasonably increase costs.”

That language, said Bolton, is designed to remove extremely high cost “edge cases” from a BEAD project map. 

“No one is against fiber, they just want to make sure to accelerate and streamline” the program without “handcuffing the state broadband officers,” he said.

Pushing forward with broadband expansion

During the Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Hudson said, “This bill would eliminate the unnecessary and expensive regulations NTIA imposed, further clarify that rate regulation by NTIA or any other entity is prohibited, ensure that the program is run on a technology-neutral basis, and more efficiently use tax dollars by ensuring that awards to providers are cost effective and that funds are only used for deployment.”

The hearing touched a multitude of issues, including challenges of deploying rural broadband, but also potential difficulties from making changes to the BEAD program mid-stream.

Some have interpreted Lutnick’s review as a full-scale BEAD shift from fiber to a wireless or satellite, although Lutnick himself said that the technology to be used would be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Reacting to the Lutnick announcement on Wednesday, the Fiber Broadband Association put out a statement highlighting the importance of using as much fiber as possible in BEAD deployment:

“Fiber optics provides significantly better performance on every metric, such as broadband speeds, capacity, lowest latency and jitter, highest resiliency, sustainability, and provides the maximum benefit for economic development and is required for AI, Quantum Networking, smart grid modernization, public safety, 5G, and the future of mobile wireless communications.

“Further… fiber delivers the lowest cost per megabit per second of any access technology. Anything less is a disservice to any American home or business that is left behind.”