Some Red States Don’t Want Too Much Satellite for BEAD

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2025 – Republican leadership in the Senate has assailed the Commerce Department's flagship broadband subsidy's preference for fiber, citing high per-location costs.

Yet officials from some red states aren’t sold on shifting the scales too far in one direction.

“We’re hoping the administration's change is not just ‘Let’s give it all to satellite, and then the problem’s over,’” Misty Ann Giles, head of Montana’s broadband office, said at a Silicon Flatirons event on Feb. 2. “Satellite is fantastic, I know a lot of people that love it in Montana. But have you ever looked at the price tag? Most folks can’t afford it.”

The $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, aimed at connecting every home and business in the country without adequate broadband, is getting closer to breaking ground after a yearslong mapping and planning effort. Three states have spending plans approved by the federal government, and more than half the states have begun fielding grant applications under the current rules.

Republican leadership in the Senate has been vocal about wanting to alter the program’s preference for fiber, which they say is too costly, a concern shared by Trump’s nominee to lead the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Commerce agency handling BEAD.

Elon Musk, the major Trump donor and head of the administration’s effort to cut spending and consolidate control over the federal bureaucracy, also owns satellite ISP Starlink and has criticized the program.

Those rules were written to favor fiber, with the thinking being its higher speeds would last further into the future. States, which are managing their separate funding allocations, can fund nonfiber projects if there’s no interest from qualified fiber ISPs in a given area, or if fiber would be too expensive. 

The three states whose spending plans were approved in the final days of the Biden administration – Louisiana, Delaware, and Nevada – did fund fiber for the majority of their eligible locations, but Louisiana and Nevada tapped satellite providers for their most remote passings. Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper Systems have prequalified to participate in many states.

Giles emphasized Montana wasn’t looking to ditch satellite entirely, but wanted the freedom to choose how to spend its $629 million allocation.

“A lot of us states are advocating for total neutrality,” she said. “It’s your state, you know what’s best, you work through it and figure it out.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska., submitted a written question to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the subject after his confirmation hearing.

“I want to flag that there is not as much low-Earth Orbit satellite coverage in Alaska as the rest of the continental U.S. Our constituents appreciate Starlink in many circumstances, including when there are service disruptions associated with fiber, but the connection is not consistent and reliable yet and cannot cover the state with the current coverage,” he wrote. “Will you assure me that Commerce will not rely on Starlink in Alaska as a solution to all our problems?”

Lutnick’s answer: “I commit to working with your office on pursuing the most efficient and effective solutions for Alaskans.”

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry – whose state was one of the three to have its spending plan approved by the Biden NTIA – penned a letter to Lutnick last month calling for LEO broadband to be defined as “reliable” under BEAD, which would remove some hoops from the process of funding satellite without doing away with fiber’s priority.

“We also feel very confident that a significant majority of our dollars will go to build fiber connectivity to these locations, a solution that is well suited for many areas of Louisiana,” Landry wrote. He noted the state “strongly pursued a tech neutral solution, including specifically engaging with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite service providers in order to deliver universal coverage.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., didn’t mention satellite specifically in her questions to Lutnick, but emphasized she did not want a rule change that would create a lengthy pause. West Virginia is relatively further along in the process than other states.

“I do not want West Virginia’s 3 years of hard work to be wasted,” she wrote to Lutnick.