About half of the funding from the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program is designated as non-deployment funds — money not used for the build-out of the actual infrastructure — and can be spent in other ways. As initially approved by Congress, these included upgrading 911 connectivity.
“This is a lot of money. We need to be good stewards on this money. And so rushing it out the door without proper oversight would just not be responsible,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Arielle Roth, who serves as administrator for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). “And it’s a dereliction of duty.”
Roth spoke on a panel last week at the BEAD Implementation Summit, organized and hosted by Broadband Breakfast, a news and policy organization focused on broadband technology.
When the second Trump administration took office, officials changed the BEAD program’s policies to require that states consider other technologies — namely low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology offered by companies like Starlink. This was a shift away from a preference for fiber, which is largely regarded as a gold standard for delivering fast, resilient broadband today.
But since LEO technology is cheaper to deploy compared to fiber, the BEAD program is left with some $21 billion in “non-deployment” funding.
NTIA held listening sessions with the states to learn how the money should be used. Some 1,700 participants submitted more than 800 written comments, Roth said.
Their ideas included using the funding to reduce permitting obstacles, developing workforce programs, improving public safety communications, helping rural airports achieve better connectivity, and improving online safety for young people.
But without clear guidance from Washington on how non-deployment funds can be used, a Minnesota official said states are left unsure about how exactly to plan for it.
“We have no guardrails, so it’s really hard for me to say where I want it to go when I have no idea what this administration is going to have palatable thoughts on,” Bree Maki, executive director of the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development, said.
Some of the pitches for non-deployment funds the Minnesota broadband office made to its federal counterparts in Washington, D.C., revolved around contingency planning to ensure state officials have flexibility if a vendor is unable to complete their portion of the build-out, the state can pivot to another firm or technology. Minnesota was awarded $652 million in BEAD funding.
By making more locations serviceable with LEO and fixed-wireless technologies, the state now estimates it will take $380 million to expand the infrastructure across Minnesota, leaving behind $272 million as non-deployment funds.
A broadband official in Alaska sidestepped the question of how that state would use non-deployment funds. Jenae Erickson, acting public information officer for the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, said “it would purely be speculation.”
The Biden administration — which created the BEAD program as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — envisioned applying non-deployment toward initiatives like digital skills training or even workforce development.
When it comes to digital skills, Roth said, “we want [to] make sure that this is outcome driven, and we want to ensure that the money is actually producing those digital skills.”
In addition to loosening requirements that BEAD-funded broadband providers make low-cost Internet service available, the Trump administration issued an executive order in December which could prohibit state eligibility for non-deployment BEAD funds if a state adopts policies regulating artificial intelligence seen as “onerous.”
“The executive order, as a whole kind of makes every state pause and evaluate what they have going on, because there was so much in that,” Maki said, indicating it’s not yet clear what the word “onerous” means in this case.
The state is in in the middle of a legislative session and a number of AI-related bills are under consideration.
“But until NTIA defines what ‘onerous’ is … it’s really hard for me to go to the legislators and say, ‘we have to look at this a little closer,’” Maki said.
