New Study Uncovers Why Biden’s $42 Billion Broadband Plan Could Fail to Connect Households

In 2021, the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program authorized more than $42 billion in grants to “connect everyone in America to reliable, affordable high-speed internet by the end of the decade.”

Home internet has revolutionized our lives, making it almost impossible to function in the world without it. However, not everyone has access to safe, secure internet access. The Biden administration hoped to provide equality for the US residents through BEAD.

However, the BEAD program isn’t moving fast enough for some. Brendan Carr, the senior Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “In 2021, the Biden Administration got $42.45 billion from Congress to deploy high-speed Internet to millions of Americans.”

Alan Davidson, the administrator at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) which is overseeing BEAD, told lawmakers in May that BEAD wouldn’t have “shovels in the ground” until 2025 or 2026.

Carr isn’t the only Republican who feels the BEAD program is not moving forward fast enough. In an April 2023 letter to Davidson, 11 Republican US Senators warned that “NTIA’s bureaucratic red tape and far-left mandates undermine Congress’ intent and would discourage participation from broadband providers while increasing the overall cost of building out broadband networks.”

In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo back in 2022, Republican senators warned that NTIA’s proposed BEAD rollout was too complicated and would cause millions of Americans to be underserved.

According to Reason, the multiple representatives from the telecommunications industry have no interest in applying for a piece of Minnesota’s $652 million in BEAD grants. But why?

MinnPost noted that new state laws also “requir[e] companies who receive state grants to pay workers a ‘prevailing wage,’ a basic hourly rate paid on public works projects to a majority of workers in a particular occupation.”

Minnesota isn’t the only state having troubles with BEAD program grants. Mackinac Center notes that Michagan’s BEAD application strays far from the stated mission of providing internet access to those who don’t have it.

Connecticut also has its eyes set on $139 million in federal funding for high-speed broadband connection. Residents who don’t have access to 25/3 Mbps service or access to 100/20 Mbps service could get better internet connectivity.

The MIHI proposal is not neutral. Instead, it is using funding to pick winners and losers among competition telecommunications companies, specifically those who expensive wireline fiber over emerging wireless technologies that could make cable wire and other wireline technologies obsolete in the near future.

Carr already has an idea for speeding up the process and making the BEAD rollout much smoother without the current road bumps that are already being hit.

Carr’s proposal would be the most cost-effective plan that delivers faster results than the MIHI proposal, which would cost about $4,232 per unserved household in the unknown future.

The Federal Communications Commission’s most recent report on the state of broadband in America found that millions of Americans lack access to reliable broadband service. Millions more must procure broadband service from a local monopolist.

Before BEAD, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) agreed to give over ten billion dollars to a similar program that aimed to ensure broadband access to underserved areas. The Connect America Fund (CAF) focused heavily on rural communities.

In a peer-reviewed study, Harvard Law Review looked at the serviceability rate of these programs to help policymakers evaluate the success of these programs and design a new and better policy to help tackle the digital divide in the US.

Because state and federal policymakers have raised questions about the self-reported data from CAF, alongside widespread reports about problems in CAF, the Harvard Law Review used ​​the Broadband-Plan Querying Tool (“BQT”), a tool that can take a dataset of street addresses and shows the set of broadband plans like download speeds, uploads speeds, and prices.

The study looked at over 537,000 street addresses across 15 selected states, and 4 selected ISPs—internet service providers–to measure serviceability.

So where is your $10 billion in taxes going if it isn’t bringing communities online through the CAF? If the CAF isn’t working, then who knows if the BEAD program will be able to pick up the pieces.

These trends suggest that CAF is not succeeding in its mission to connect undeserved communities. Even if it does, the providers receiving funds from the program are not meeting the standards established by the CAF.

These policies are well-intention, but greed often undermines even the best-laid plans. The failures and limited successes of the CAF serve as a major warning sign, complete with blinking lights and bells, indicating that the BEAD program faces similar pitfalls that we should examine closely.

State officials responsible for selecting BEAD grantees need to consider past compliance with funding programs when deciding how to allocate these funds.

Policymakers should implement more stringent rates and service quality requirements to prevent rule-benders from serving specific communities and excluding those the funds are meant to support.

One way to keep these programs and recipients in check is by encouraging policymakers to commit to data-driven program development, especially data that is not self-provided.