Commerce: BEAD Work to Continue Amid Shutdown

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2025 – The government shut down at midnight Tuesday, putting swathes of federal employees on furlough. The Commerce Department said its $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program wouldn't be affected.

According to Commerce’s shutdown plan, dated Sept. 29, BEAD isn’t financed by annual appropriations from Congress and will continue uninhibited. So will the agency’s Middle Mile program, the Tribal Broadband Connectivity program, the Broadband Infrastructure Program, and the Connecting Minority Communities program.

The agency said its National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which manages BEAD at the other broadband programs, will retain 463 of its 600 employees, largely because their work isn’t tied to annual appropriations.

NTIA is working to approve most states’ final spending plans under BEAD by Dec. 3. The process includes revising some projects to push down state spending even further.

After that, the agency will be working to shepherd projects through the federal environmental and historical permitting processes, an effort the agency has for many months been hard at work preparing for.

FCC plan

The Federal Communications Commission put out a public notice Tuesday saying it would suspend normal operations at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. 

The agency said spectrum auction work wouldn’t be affected. Rules for an auction of 200 licenses in the AWS-3 band were finalized this summer, and the auction by law has to begin by June 23, 2026.

Comment deadlines that come during the shutdown, however long it lasts, are pushed until the day after the FCC resumes its normal operations.

“For example, if funding is appropriated for the Commission on a Monday, the Commission would return to normal operations on Tuesday morning,” the notice read. “To accommodate the orderly resumption of business, submissions due either during the suspension of operations (including the Monday when funding was appropriated), or on the Tuesday when normal operations resumed, would instead be due on Wednesday.”

Judging by the agency’s March shutdown preparations, the FCC will keep 171 of its 1,476 employees working and furlough the rest. Of those 171 employees, 36 are tasked with working on spectrum auctions and 46 are in the Office of Inspector General.

Pending transaction reviews will be delayed, as will new deals brought to the agency during the shutdown.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has asked agencies to consider laying off some furloughed employees.

“We have been hard at work the last couple of weeks preparing for a possible government shutdown,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr told attendees at the 2025 SCTE TechExpo Monday.  “Hopefully we don't get there, but we do have a game plan in place.”