Oklahoma Broadband Director Wants BEAD Flexibility

WASHINGTON, May 21, 2025 – Oklahoma’s broadband director is, like many of his counterparts, looking for flexibility from the Trump administration as his office administers its slice of a $42.45 billion federal broadband expansion program.

Mike Sanders, executive director of the Oklahoma Broadband Office since 2023, said the office has been setting up meetings with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and federal lawmakers from his state to make his case.

“Flexibility is what we’re wanting the outgrowth of those meetings” to be, he said. “We want to make sure that they know my team and I know what’s best.”

Sanders spoke at a Fiber Broadband Association webinar Wednesday.

The Commerce Department, which houses NTIA, has put the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program on hold at the federal level while the agency prepared updated rules. The agency is expected to release them this summer, and it’s not yet clear if the new rules will require states to redo any work. 

A drumbeat of state and federal lawmakers, broadband offices, and other stakeholders have been pleading with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick not to hand down sweeping changes.

More than 40 states have started or finished the process of taking BEAD applications, and three were given approval on final awards under the Biden administration but have been held up since President Donald Trump took office. West Virginia had made its tentative awards, but was given a 90-day deadline extension in April to conform the document to administration priorities. That extension was later expanded to all states and territories.

For Oklahoma’s part, the state is wrapping up its application window on Memorial Day, May 26. Sanders said the state’s preference “has always been fiber,” especially buried fiber, because it’s resistant to damage from extreme weather events like tornadoes and wildfires.

“Yes, it is expensive," he said. “However, you sometimes get what you pay for.”

He stressed that even with Oklahoma’s $797 million BEAD allocation the state would surely fund some non-fiber projects to connect its more remote homes and businesses.

The state separately put $500 million from the American Rescue Plan Act toward expanding broadband infrastructure, and construction is under way for 131 of those 180 projects, plus deployments funded by other federal programs. Oklahoma's broadband office also recommended $53 million in funding for middle mile projects last week.

Sanders said that he was hoping to avoid a delay beyond the extra 90 days –  which would put Oklahoma’s final proposal deadline in October – so the workforce that had already built up to meet current broadband deployment demand could be kept in-state for BEAD projects.

“We’ve been able to get folks,” he said. “We want to keep those jobs here.”

ISPs and contractors in Louisiana, one of the states that had been given approval under the Biden administration, have said they fear contractors simply leaving the state to find work after staffing up to work on now-stalled projects.