Broadband Industry Reports Growing Frustration With BEAD
Industry leaders criticized the new push in the BEAD program for inconsistent state results and appearing to favor satellite technology.
WASHINGTON, September 30, 2025 – Industry experts expressed mounting frustration with the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program during a Broadband Breakfast Live Online discussion at the Mountain Connect conference on August 6, citing inconsistent state results and concerns about funding priorities shifting toward satellite technology.
The $42.5 billion BEAD program has produced sharply divergent outcomes across states during recent "benefit of the bargain" funding rounds, according to reporting from the conference. While some states saw dramatic increases in applications, others experienced significant participation drops that could leave rural areas unserved.
"Minnesota saw something like 29% of their locations didn't receive any bids at all during the benefit of the bargain round, and Arkansas said they saw a 25% decrease in the number of applicants," said Cameron Marx, a Reporter with Broadband Breakfast covering the conference.
Christopher Ali
However, other states reported the opposite trend. "The Arizona state Broadband Director said that they saw a 33% increase in the number of applicants during the benefit of the bargain round," Marx noted, while Michigan received 400 more applications than in previous rounds.
Roger Timmerman, CEO of Utopia Fiber, criticized recent program changes that prioritize low Earth orbit satellite services over fiber infrastructure. "We're probably going to get undercut by LEO and they're going to take the lion's share of the money, and these communities that were on the brink of having enormous investment will get what they already have available, which is LEO," Timmerman said.
The satellite prioritization has created widespread industry concern about long-term viability. "When you run the numbers on it, they don't have a path forward to actually providing service to the millions of homes," Timmerman said, referencing capacity limitations of satellite networks compared to terrestrial infrastructure.
Carl Guardino, Vice President of Government Affairs at Toronto Wireless, emphasized the need for technology standards. "If you're going to earn the hard-earned taxpayer dollars of American families and businesses, you should meet and exceed the standards," Guardino said.
The funding changes have created market uncertainty that industry consultant Tory Richtmyer said is hampering investment decisions. "Uncertainty is the number one killer of investment because people want to know where the rules are, what they have to follow to get there and how it's going to work," Richtmyer said.
Dr. Christopher Ali, a Penn State telecommunications Professor, warned against viewing BEAD as a comprehensive solution to connectivity challenges. "One of the lies that we are telling ourselves is that the digital divide will be solved when everybody is connected, and that's just not true," Ali said during his conference presentation.
Ali argued the digital divide encompasses affordability, digital skills and device access beyond just connectivity infrastructure. "The digital divide is fundamentally connected to other social elements like poverty, like racism, like discrimination, like marginalization," he said.
Despite the frustrations, some panelists noted positive industry momentum. Timmerman reported Utopia Fiber's "best three months in our whole history for subscriber growth," while emphasizing that network deployment continues nationwide independent of federal programs.
The BEAD program requires states to prioritize fiber infrastructure but allows exceptions for areas where fiber deployment is deemed impractical or too expensive.
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