Former BEAD Director: Trump Admin Could Squander Once-in-a-Generation Fiber Broadband Investment

WASHINGTON, April 25, 2025 –  The former director of a $42.45 billion federal broadband expansion effort warned this week that the Trump administration is on the verge of unraveling four years of progress amid forthcoming changes to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program.

At best, the proposed changes could delay shovel-ready fiber projects by a year in many states. At worst, they could divert billions in taxpayer dollars to satellite providers – despite questions that current low-Earth orbit systems fall short of the speed, latency, and capacity thresholds required.

“I’m still hopeful,” said Evan Feinman, former director of the BEAD program under President Joe Biden, “but not optimistic.”

In a candid conversation Tuesday on the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Community Broadband Bits podcast, Feinman said that just before his departure from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in March, staff members were discussing plans to take away states’ authority to set their own “extremely high-cost” thresholds.

That threshold plays a critical role in determining where states can stop funding fiber builds and turn to alternative technologies like fixed wireless or low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Feinman warned that capping that number too low could fundamentally reshape the program’s technology mix – away from fiber.

“It’s hard to know exactly, because the number [they pick] matters the most,” Feinman said. “If they set [the high-cost threshold] at $2,500... you’re talking about the program becoming primarily a LEO program.”

He pointed to Nevada as a striking example. Under its current BEAD plan – already approved by NITA but awaiting sign-off from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for months – the state expects to fund projects that are 80% fiber, 10% fixed wireless, and 10% LEO. But if NTIA forces a hard cap of $5,000 per location, Feinman said the model breaks.

“You’d see a switch from 80% fiber, 10% wireless, 10% LEO to about 30% fiber and 70% LEO—zero wireless,” he said.

Similar impacts would hit Louisiana, another state with a shovel-ready plan. Feinman noted that Louisiana’s final proposal calls for 95% fiber, 2% LEO satellites, and 3% fixed wireless. Under a forced cost cap, that would fall to roughly a 50/50 split between fiber and LEO satellite.

Feinman brought up capacity constraints associated with LEOs that have been reported by the Fiber Broadband Association: that Starlink only has the capacity to support 1.7 million subscribers in the U.S. “By 2030, Starlink will have a larger, more capable fleet, but spectrum constraints will remain,” FBA has argued.

“LEO tech is cool, and it’s important. There are some locations for which it's the best option,” Feinman said. However, he added, “It is not true that everybody who doesn't have service today could get on Starlink tomorrow, and so we wanted to reserve that capacity for the most remote locations. There's a real risk if you just let them apply anywhere.”

Congress Set Clear Broadband Standards

When BEAD was created within the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, “long-term viability of projects” was expressly mentioned as a priority. The BEAD statute does not mandate symmetrical speeds, but the IIJA does require a funded BEAD project to deploy broadband service that provides: (1) at least 100 Megabit per second (Mbps) download and 20 Mbps upload speeds (100 * 20 Mbps), (2) latency sufficiently low for real-time, interactive applications, and (3) network reliability of no more than 48 hours of outage time over any 365-day period.

IIJA directed the NTIA’s Administrator, Alan Davidson at the time, to set the speed, latency, and reliability standards for projects, and the states themselves to be the final arbiters of funding recipients.

In 2022, NTIA adopted guidance strongly emphasizing end-to-end fiber as the preferred technology. While satellite and fixed wireless were to be considered in high-cost or hard-to-reach areas, the IIJA makes clear that not all broadband technologies are equal under the program. 

Still, there is popular sentiment among Republicans, in part perpetuated by NTIA Administrator-designate Arielle Roth, that IIJA was indeed written to be tech-neutral. 

And, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took office earlier this year, reports emerged in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, that in a private meetings with BEAD staff in March, Lutnick explicitly instructed officials to increase the use of satellite technology, naming Elon Musk and Starlink to be the direct beneficiaries.

Feinman confirmed this directive, stating:​ “NTIA is still working with the Secretary's office to come up with new guidance to reconfigure the BEAD program to effectively implement the directive that they got from Secretary Lunick, which was to increase the use of satellite and decrease the use of fiber in the program.” 

Feinman said NTIA was conducting a review in name only.

The outcome was predetermined at the outset,” Feinman said of the Commerce Department’s current ‘review’ of the program launched March 5. “There’s nothing being reviewed.”

State Plans Could Be Upended

During the Community Broadband Bits podcast, host Chris Mitchell criticized the administration’s current direction: “We’re going to end up paying more to build what we could have already started,” Mitchell said. “Or, we’ll just abandon it,” Feinman added.

The warnings are particularly urgent for Mitchell’s home state of Minnesota, where short construction seasons typically run from late spring through early fall. Broadband projects delayed by the Trump administration’s 90-day program freeze, which was issued on Tuesday, now risk missing the 2025 build window entirely.

“There is a real risk that we are going to lose an entire building season for the country north of I-40,” Feinman said, referring to the interstate highway that runs from southern California directly across to South Carolina.

In an April 2 letter to Lutnick, Minnesota’s broadband chief Bree Maki urged the Commerce Department to make “any changes enacted by [the Trump] NTIA optional” for states. “Congress created BEAD to give states the power to create state-specific programs,” Maki wrote.

Kristi Westbrock, CEO of Consolidated Telecommunications Company, has also warned that imposing a per-location price cap under BEAD would be “terribly detrimental” to Minnesota’s efforts to deliver universal fiber access. CTC is a member-owned cooperative based in Baxter, Minnesota, serving central and northern parts of the state. 

“All of the locations that are left are really high-cost areas,” she said, noting that Minnesota’s Border-to-Border Broadband Development Grant Program has been subsidizing fiber expansion since 2014. “Minnesotans expect fiber."

The disruptions that many state leaders fear have already begun in West Virginia, a state that had finalized a universal fiber plan ahead of schedule and more than $150 million under budget. That was until Gov. Patrick Morrisey, R, met with Lutnick and was granted a 90-day window to reassess the state’s technology mix. As a result, fiber deployments may largely be scaled back in favor of satellite service. 

Still Hope for Fiber?

Feinman said he remains outspoken because he believes there’s still time to get it right from his perspective.

Before leaving the NTIA, Feinman said he wrote a memo advising the incoming administration to avoid derailing BEAD, saying it would give the Trump administration a major political win. 

Feinman suggested that officials could spend the next three years celebrating groundbreakings and fiber lightings, framing the successful expansion as their achievement.

“It’ll be a huge political win for the administration, and it’ll be a huge win for rural America,” he reiterated during the podcast. 

“[The Trump administration] can blunt the impact of the midterm elections … [and] can dramatically increase the president’s standing in rural America, by just getting out of the way,” Feinman said.

“There are construction crews waiting,” Feinman said. “They could be building today.”