Fiber Broadband Association Voices Confidence About Fiber's Role in BEAD
GOP lawmakers have signaled a desire to increase participation from fixed wireless and satellite.
Jake Neenan

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5, 2025 – There’s been a lot of talk about the possibility that the Trump administration will dial back the fiber preference baked into the $42.5 billion federal broadband program that’s nearing implementation. The head of the Fiber Broadband Association, the fiber industry’s main trade group, isn’t worried about it.
“What I was hearing from very conservative folks on the hill was that it wasn’t really about pushing other technologies, it’s about market forces,” FBA CEO Gary Bolton said Wednesday. “And when you let the market decide, fiber wins.”
In other words, even if new policies from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration make it easier to fund fixed wireless and satellite, Bolton thinks states will still go with as much fiber as possible given the choice. He spoke at an FBA webinar.
The states that have put forward Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program spending plans – Louisiana, Delaware, and Nevada – did indeed fund mostly fiber. Nevada greenlit fiber projects to more than 80 percent of its eligible locations, with Louisiana and Delaware hitting 95 and 100 percent respectively. Those plans were approved by the NTIA in the final days of the Biden administration.
Howard Lutnick, tapped by Trump to head the Commerce Department, which houses NTIA, emphasized cost efficiency – fiber's more expansive than alternatives – and using all available technologies at a confirmation hearing last week, and Arielle Roth, the nominee to lead NTIA, has strongly criticized the program’s fiber preference in the past, as have several GOP lawmakers. But Bolton noted states are the ones ultimately deciding which projects get funded.
“When we talk to all the state broadband offices, of course they’re going to deploy fiber,” Bolton said. “They want to make sure this is a one-time investment, they want to be able to have critical infrastructure.”
Lutnick notably didn’t commit to abiding by the previous NTIA approvals at his confirmation hearing. Adding more uncertainty, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of the satellite ISP Starlink, has been rapidly consolidating power in Washington. It’s not clear that BEAD is high on his list of priorities, but he’s publicly criticized the program.
It’s at least possible that the Trump NTIA puts forward a new rule that forces states’ hands, according to New Street Research policy analyst and former FCC chief of staff Blair Levin. He’s written in multiple investor notes to watch for the agency setting a universal cost-per-location threshold above which a project would be disqualified. That would effectively shift some amount of money from fiber, as it’s more expensive than other technologies.
Taking a similar tack to Bolton, Levin has said there may be some political pushback from Republican governors if NTIA goes that road.
Current BEAD rules – under which more than half the states have begun taking grant applications from ISPs – give fiber projects priority. As long as a fiber applicant qualifies and the project comes in under a cost-per-location threshold set by the state, a non-fiber applicant is out of luck.
But states can fund other technology if fiber’s not an option, and have been encouraged to do so by the NTIA in an effort to reach universal coverage. Non-fiber projects are separated into tiers, with cable and fixed wireless on licensed spectrum being deemed “reliable” and getting priority themselves over satellite and unlicensed fixed wireless, termed “alternative technologies.”
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry penned a letter to Lutnick last month pushing to classify satellite and unlicensed fixed wireless as reliable, effectively removing some extra hoops states need to jump through before funding them, but stopped short of calling for an end to the fiber preference.