Charter CEO Warming up to BEAD

WASHINGTON, September 11, 2024 – Charter Communications' top executive appears to be warming up to the Biden administration’s $42.5 billion broadband expansion program. He said it will still depend on individual state rules.

Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey has previously expressed disappointment with the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program’s rules around capped plans for low-income households and labor standards. He emphasized the company would stay out of states, which have some flexibility in implementing the program, where rules were unfavorable.

On Wednesday, speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference, Winfrey said the program does play into the company’s rural expansion plans. 

“BEAD has more difficult, more cumbersome regulation around it than either [the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund] or the state grants where we’ve had significant success,” Winfrey said. “I think it’s going to require discipline on our part, on a state-by-state basis, based on how those regulations are ultimately applied. I’m still, despite that, excited about BEAD under the right circumstances.”

The company is at least interested in participating in Louisiana. Charter was one of 33 companies to pre-qualify for BEAD in the state, a necessary step before being able to apply for grants.

Louisiana’s BEAD rules allow participating ISPs to bump their low-cost plan up to $65 if they can show the baseline $30 would be unworkable. The state scores applicants higher for things like paying prevailing wages and union neutrality, but doesn’t mandate them.

Charter’s not the only ISP to express wariness about BEAD. Companies like AT&T and Comcast have said they’ll sit out in states where they don’t like the rules and coalitions of smaller providers have asked the Commerce Department to change program rules they say would make it hard to participate, most recently around the low-cost plan requirement. 

Telecom consultant Carol Mattey has said she thinks the bigger providers could be bluffing and will ultimately make bids.

Charter was one of the biggest winners of the Federal Communications Commission’s RDOF auction, taking home more than $1.2 billion to serve more than 1 million homes and businesses by 2026. The company has since defaulted on more than 23,000 of those, citing rising costs and the presence of existing broadband not captured on older FCC maps.