Capito: Fiber Still Likely to Win in West Virginia, 'Fine' With BEAD Rebidding
The West Virginia senator has been the loudest GOP critic of how the Trump administration has handled the program.
WASHINGTON, June 16, 2025 – Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., told local news that she doesn’t expect her state’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment plan to change drastically under new program rules. Previously a staunch opponent of rebidding, she said she was “fine” with satellite providers getting another chance to bid for homes and businesses the state had awarded to fiber ISPs.
“My understanding is from our West Virginia leadership at the Broadband Council that our plan meshes fairly well with what the new guidance is,” she told Wheeling, W. Va.-based outlet The Intelligencer. “I think certain points will have to be sent back out to be rebid to see if some of the satellite companies want to bid in that area. I mean, I’m fine with that.”
On June 6, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration handed down new rules for the $42.45 billion BEAD program, rescinding Biden-era approvals and requiring all states to field an additional round of grant applications with a new scoring rubric. West Virginia had finished its spending plan and gone entirely with fiber, something the Trump administration has been opposed to because it can have a higher deployment cost.
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
A draft of West Virginia’s plan published by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society showed the state’s average per-location cost was $9,182, much lower than the $100,000 that the administration specified as being unreasonable in its new policy notice. The state said it selected “relatively few” projects with a per-location cost above $28,000.
The state also said it received little interest from non-fiber providers the first time around, with all but one of their applicants proposing to use fiber. West Virginia didn’t publish the ISPs that prequalified for BEAD in the state, but the low-earth orbit satellite options in the U.S. are effectively Elon Musk’s Starlink or Amazon’s Kuiper Systems.
Under the new rules states have 90 days from June 6 to update maps and hold another bidding round, this time making it easier for non-fiber providers to compete on the basis of cost with fiber projects, which were previously given automatic priority because of fiber’s high capacity. States will have to decide on a per-application basis whether a project meets the statutory definition of a priority project, namely ‘future-proof’ scalability.
Most states had already started or finished their application processes, and experts have said the expedited timeline for another one might be too difficult for some states to meet.
Capito has been the loudest Republican critic of how the Trump administration handled the BEAD program, telling Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick repeatedly that she was frustrated her state had to wait for new rules despite having finished its spending plan. The plan, which included tentative grant winners, was set to be submitted by mid-April, but the NTIA told West Virginia and other states to hold off while it worked to finalize the new rules.
She warned Lutnick last month not to require another round of bids – advice Commerce ultimately did not take – saying in a letter the move could delay projects by another year. Capito also told Arielle Roth, Trump’s pick to run NTIA, that she thought “if a state wants to use fiber they should be able to.”
At the state level, broadband offices are focused on keeping their participants on board with submitting another application on short notice.
“We have been getting questions from our applicants – ‘I’m not sure I understand this. I’m not sure I want to do this again,’” Joseph Le, head of Kansas’s broadband office, said last week at a Broadband Breakfast event.
