Josh Etheridge was gearing up to build out new broadband infrastructure for unconnected Louisianans. EPC, a construction company he had founded with his brother, had spent $2 million on machines and materials it needed to expand internet access in the state under a federal program that aims to provide “internet for all.” He’d brought on additional staff to handle the expected influx of work.
Then, as the company was just days away from planting shovels in the ground, rollout of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program was paused as Trump administration officials vowed to review and revise its requirements.
In the three to four months since, Etheridge has had to let go of 80% of the company’s subcontractors. He’s started searching for private investment dollars to sustain the company during the pause. EPC has stopped its local philanthropic efforts, like sponsoring area baseball and football teams. Etheridge still receives calls from customers who were expecting to be connected through the program asking when work will begin.
“I feel very helpless,” Etheridge told Agri-Pulse. "As an entrepreneur, I’m a will-your-way-through type of guy. One of the greatest aspects of our company is when I tell my people, 'Throw this rope over your shoulder with me,' they grab the rope, and we look forward, and we drag this company through whatever hell it's going through. And to know I can’t do that with this program is just disheartening."
On Jan. 13, in the final days of the Biden administration, Louisiana officially received approval from the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration for its plan to use $1.3 billion to connect 140,000 new locations to broadband. It was the first state in the nation to receive the federal go-
Josh Etheridge (LinkedIn photo)ahead, with Delaware and Nevada receiving theirs soon after.
But the Trump administration took over and began an assessment that halted further work just as Louisiana broadband providers were preparing to begin the buildout. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that the department was launching a “rigorous review” of the BEAD program and would be updating it to “to take a tech-neutral approach that is rigorously driven by outcomes, so states can provide internet access for the lowest cost.”
"Under the revamped BEAD program, all Americans will receive the benefit of the bargain that Congress intended,” Lutnick said in a March 5 press release. "We’re going to deliver high-speed internet access, and we will do it efficiently and effectively at the lowest cost to taxpayers.”
Trump administration weighs larger role for satellite service
Congress approved the $42.5 billion BEAD program in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but distributing those dollars has taken more than three years. Some of this was due to the Federal Communications Commission’s need to create more accurate broadband maps, which took more than a year.
Evan Feinman (LinkedIn photo)Critics have also pointed to Biden-era labor and wage, climate resiliency and middle class affordability requirements as reasons for the slow rollout. Former BEAD Director Evan Feinman said these will likely be taken out by the Trump administration.
But Feinman, who served as the BEAD program’s director before leaving in March, said the administration's primary focus in its review is finding ways to expand satellite’s role in the program, which could potentially lessen fiber’s share of contracts.
BEAD currently allows states to prioritize end-to-end fiber over low-earth satellite and fixed wireless, a source of consternation for companies that deploy these technologies.
For instance, SpaceX told the NTIA in a public comment last year that low-earth orbit satellite providers are “relegated to the bottom tier” of the program’s hierarchy,” which it called “wrong,” and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a Trump adviser who set up the Department of Government Efficiency, has been a past critic of BEAD, calling it “an outrageous waste of taxpayer money.”
Tom Stroup, president of the Satellite Industry Association, told Agri-Pulse he believes low-earth orbit satellite technologies are capable of playing a larger role than they do under current guidelines, which he said are “very fiber-centric.” While he acknowledged that the satellite industry is not capable of providing broadband to every U.S. household, he said BEAD’s $42 billion investment would make it to fewer homes overall if it kept its focus on fiber.
“It’s not that we’re advocating half of the money go to satellite companies,” Stroup said. “It’s just that they’d be eligible to apply along with everybody else.”
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Brian Whitacre, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University, said fiber is more expensive to install, but tends to offer the fastest speeds and will be good for at least 50 years once placed in the ground. Once fiber is in place, a typical service subscription can cost anywhere between $60 and $80 per month, he added.
Low-earth orbit satellites, on the other hand, offer slower speeds and can suffer from latency challenges, Whitacre said. While the installation costs are typically much lower than fiber — around $350 for a dish — monthly subscriptions can reach $120 per month or higher.
These satellites tend to have lifespans of five to seven years, though Stroup said this helps companies introduce updated technology into the atmosphere. When equipment does need to be replaced, he said that is the company’s responsibility, not the customer's.
Whitacre said satellite broadband technologies are generally seen as a Band-Aid for unconnected rural communities, making internet accessible to those who live in remote areas that otherwise may be difficult and expensive to connect to with fiber.
“Fiber is just a clear, in my opinion, better answer for rural communities in the long term,” Whitacre told Agri-Pulse. "It’s future-proof, faster speeds, no latency issues.”
Feinman, the former BEAD director, said prior to his departure, he saw Lutnick pushing for a "one-size-fits-all cost-per-location cap” through the program, which he said would take away states' discretion over technology types and give satellite companies an advantage due to their lower installation costs.
He worries the Trump administration's efforts to expand satellite usage through the program will leave rural citizens who may never again see this level of federal investment to build out broadband with “worse connections at higher monthly costs.”
“When we did rural electrification, we didn’t mail batteries to some people and say, ‘well, you’re too far, this is what you get,” Feinman said, referring to efforts to power rural communities in the mid-1900s. “We got every single American access to electricity. That’s what we need to do here. We need to get as many people as possible the best connections we can because otherwise this opportunity is going to pass us by."
Awardees' buildout plans in limbo after pause
Chris Disher, the CEO of Louisiana-based Cajun Broadband, has trucks and materials waiting in his yard. He’s ready to begin connecting 12,000 homes and businesses to the internet. All he needs is the go-ahead.
Cajun Broadband was one of the BEAD awardees selected by the state of Louisiana and was getting ready to deploy 3.2 million feet of fiber. Now, Disher worries changes to the program could be so drastic that he will lose the award.
“If they do minor modifications and leave the awardees alone, then that’s fine,” he said. "But if they redo the program, that would be devastating.”
Redoing the bidding process at this stage in the game means companies already know their competitors’ deployment strategies. They could use that information to expand their own networks to areas other companies planned to build out just to economically hurt their competitors, EPC’s Etheridge said.
“If they come back and say we’ve got to rebid it all, it’s gonna be a nightmare,” said J.C. Utter, chief financial officer for Faster Cajun Networks, one of Louisiana’s awardees. “We got over the finish line and now here we are not knowing whether we wasted our time or what’s gonna happen."
So far, all 56 states and U.S. territories eligible for BEAD funding have had their initial proposals approved by NTIA, while 51 have concluded their state challenge process, according to the agency’s tracker. Delaware, Louisiana, Nevada and West Virginia have already selected service providers, while 39 others are currently in the process of choosing theirs.
Click here to view a chart showing where states are in the BEAD process.
Brian Mitchell, the director of Nevada's broadband office, said broadband providers in his state could feasibly begin construction this summer, once contract negotiations are completed and some paperwork is signed.
Brian Mitchell (LinkedIn photo)
Mitchell said he’s not too concerned about technology-oriented changes impacting the state’s plan because “that’s something that we built into our process from the beginning.” Under Nevada's current plan, 80% of the underserved locations that will receive broadband would be served through fiber while 10% would be served with satellite and 10% would be served with wireless, he said.
“We have a really good mix of technologies,” he said. “Sometimes the right tool was fiber, and sometimes the right tool was satellite. And I think that’s what the Trump administration would like to see states do.”
Jonathan Chambers, co-CEO of the broadband company Conexon, a Louisiana awardee, said it’s hard for him to be critical of the Trump administration’s pause of the BEAD program when it took the Biden administration three and a half years to implement it. He’d like to see current leaders leave technology decisions up to county officials, who know the needs of their communities. While NTIA employees come and go, rural communities must use the broadband connections created through the program over the long term, he said.
“They’re not going to be in these jobs in a few years time — it’s just the nature of it,” Chambers said of Commerce Department officials. "You come in, serve in government a few years, you move on. You know who’s still gonna be there when these decisions get made? The folks who live in these rural areas. They’ve gotta live with those decisions.”
Etheridge, with EPC, said the longer the pause continues, the more difficult it will be to find a workforce willing to take on BEAD projects. Local providers have been working for years building up their staffs in preparation for an influx of federal dollars, but may struggle to convince employees that are now being let go to come back.
“Everybody was psyched, everybody was ready,” Etheridge said. "We were gearing up, we were building these companies. Try doing that again after you’ve been smoked in the face. You’re going to have a hard time convincing the workforce in our industry to get back up and get back in.”
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