Missouri Stakeholders Urging Against BEAD Changes
Louisiana ISPs and contractors, state legislators, and state broadband offices have opposed upending the program.
WASHINGTON, May 2, 2025 – A group of Missouri state legislators, broadband providers, and others in the state are urging the Commerce Department not to make major changes to a $42.45 billion federal broadband expansion program.
Missouri Letter to Sec. Lutnick
“Missouri is almost at the end and the future for broadband in Missouri looks good,” the group wrote in a letter posted last week, but sent on March 27, to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and others. “At this stage, federally mandated changes would disrupt this progress and delay deployment by years.”
The Trump administration is planning on changing the rules of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program to, among other things, “take a more technology-neutral approach” – the Trump administration and GOP leadership have opposed the program’s preference for fiber, citing its relatively higher cost to deploy.
More than 40 states have already started fielding grant applications under the current rules, and it’s not yet clear if the administration will want sweeping changes to their project selection criteria.
The Missouri letter is the latest in a series of similar efforts asking Commerce not to stray too far from the course. Two ISPs and a contractor in Louisiana, a group of more than 100 state legislators, and state broadband offices have sent similar letters to Lutnick. Senators, including some Republicans, also pressed Trump’s nominee to head the agency within commerce that handles BEAD on the issue.
The nominee, Arielle Roth, has been critical of the fiber preference and has yet to be confirmed. States expect new guidance from the agency to come this month.
“There are approximately 200,000 unserved locations in Missouri and the first call for applications resulted in receiving applications for 90% of these unserved locations,” the signatories wrote. “All applications were fiber based and [the broadband office] plans to include other forms of technology where necessary to ensure that every Missourian has access to high-quality and affordable service.”
Missouri fully closed its first round of bidding on March 23. A best-and-final offer period, in which the top two applicants for a given area competed for funding, ended April 21. A second round is planned for this summer.
The letter was led by Janie Dunning, a former state rural development director at the USDA and currently a coordinator for Show Me Broadband. Six ISPs and fifteen state lawmakers – nine Republicans and six Democrats – were among the 55 who signed on in total.
Three states, including Louisiana, chose BEAD winners and received federal approval on their final spending plans in the final days of the Biden administration, but they’ve been under a budgetary review since Trump took office.
West Virginia, which had finished its plan, was given last month an extra 90 days to conform the document to the administration’s priorities. While many states are moving ahead with their application and scoring work, at least Maine, South Dakota, and Alaska have said they’re waiting for new guidance.
The Commerce Department issued a blanket 90-day extension for all states last week. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Commerce agency handling BEAD, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but said in the waiver it was looking to “remove unnecessary rules and mandates, to improve efficiency, take a more technology-neutral approach, cut unnecessary red tape, and streamline deployment.”
