In his recent op-ed, “How to connect America’s heartland and fix Biden’s mess,” John Czwartacki argues that the Broadband Equality, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, intended to bridge the digital divide in rural America, has become a bureaucratic burden filled with politically motivated requirements, leaving much of the $42 billion unspent. To help solve this problem, John proposes that a streamlined rollout, by reallocating savings to mobile infrastructure and removing the mandate for fiber-only deployment, would speed up high-speed access in America’s heartland without additional taxpayer spending.
In his op-ed, he writes:
In effect, states can run fiber to a single home, but they cannot use BEAD dollars to build the tower that would give the entire county reliable service. This regulatory handcuff remains one of the program’s last major self-imposed limitations.
The Trump administration has the opportunity to remove this last barrier and fully unleash BEAD to finally deliver for rural America. Allowing states to dedicate a portion of BOTB’s savings to mobile infrastructure would speed up buildout times, close coverage gaps, and complement work already underway. And it would achieve that without spending a single additional taxpayer dollar.
From the estimated $21 billion in BEAD saved, about $8 billion could be used to build roughly 6,000 major 5G towers nationwide. That investment would push the country toward 99 percent coverage, eliminating rural dead zones that a fiber-only approach simply cannot reach. In the most remote areas, emerging direct-to-cell satellite technologies, like those offered by Elon Musk’s Starlink, can efficiently fill the gap without unnecessary construction.
Read the full article at The Washington Reporter.