Trump Plan To Redirect Billions In Broadband Subsidies To Elon Musk Starts Seeing Blowback From States

Broadband

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

After spending election season whining that the program was taking too long, Republicans have been introducing massive new changes to a $42.5 billion infrastructure bill broadband grant program (BEAD) that not only don’t serve the public interest, but could also introduce years of potential new delays.

Their changes are twofold: one, they want to strip away requirements that the resulting taxpayer-funded broadband is (gasp) affordable to poor people. Two, they want to slather Elon Musk’s low-earth-orbit satellite service Starlink with billions in new subsidies, redirecting that money away from other, higher-capacity, better alternatives (like community-owned open access fiber).

Speaking last week to a Senate Appropriations Committee, Trump administration Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed that the NTIA will “soon” issue a new Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) that states will have 90 days to respond to. That will require states to basically reboot years of work in developing their state broadband plans, something outside groups say could take years.

It’s important to understand that numerous states were just a few steps away from deploying next-generation fiber to communities that had never had internet access before when Republicans decided they’d “fix” the program by shifting billions in funds to Elon Musk’s expensive, congested, environmentally problematic satellite service. This while the press writes numerous stories about “Elon Musk leaving politics” and he and Donald Trump have their public falling out (which has now been more muted).

The Western Governor’s Association was quick to send a polite letter to Lutnick noting that “significant required alterations to state and territory plans could cause further delays by up to 12 months,” which again seems like a generous estimation. Senate Democrats also wrote a very polite May 30 letter to Lutnick lamenting the unnecessary delays:

“States have already developed plans to address these needs, and restarting or slowing down the process will only hold back progress,” the Democrats’ letter said. “States must maintain the flexibility to choose the highest quality broadband options, rather than be forced by bureaucrats in Washington to funnel funds to Elon Musk’s Starlink, which lacks the scalability, reliability, and speed of fiber or other terrestrial broadband solutions.”

When the former boss of the BEAD program, Evan Feinman, left his post in March he noted how numerous states were just steps away from launching their massive fiber expansions. Feinman wasn’t subtle about his belief that the revisions are a cronyistic hand out to Elon Musk that will actually harm the goal of bringing affordable, reliable, and fast internet access to the masses.

“Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” Feinman said.

The original BEAD program prioritized fiber investment because high-capacity, future proof fiber is the best use of taxpayer money. Ideally you want to drive fiber into as many areas as possible, then fill in the rest with 5G wireless and fixed wireless. After that, you can fill in any remaining gaps with LEO satellite broadband options.

Again though, LEO satellite lacks the capacity to scale to actually address U.S. broadband gaps, and is too expensive for the rural Americans most in need of access. Not only is Starlink expensive and increasingly congested, it harms scientific research and there’s evidence that the disposable nature of the satellites as they burn up in orbit may ultimately erode the ozone layer.

But because Elon Musk runs the company, Republicans think Starlink is some kind of magic. Unfortunately for many Trump supporters, money directed to Starlink is money directed away from better options, including the cooperatives, city-owned utilities, and municipal broadband operations providing locals gigabit fiber, sometimes for as little as $55 a month.

“What this probably means is that most states will have to re-write their grant proposals and rerun their grant programs from scratch, and then NTIA will have to approve them,” Gigi Sohn, the Director for the American Association for Public Broadband, said in a post to LinkedIn. “This makes disbursement in 7 months largely a fantasy.”

Forcing your constituents to use shittier, more expensive broadband is very on brand for Republicans, who, in just the last year, have declared that the government helping poor people afford broadband is unconstitutional, killed a popular program providing $30 broadband discounts for low-income Americans, effectively banned holding your broadband ISP accountable for literally anything, and even banned schoolkids from getting access to free Wi-Fi hotspots.

In its place is basically a federal policy that rubber stamps every last whim of terrible regional monopolies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. And rich benefactors like Elon Musk. Anybody consciously voting for this level of sleazy self-serving corruption shouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy machinery.

Filed Under: bead, broadband, corruption, fcc, fiber, gigabit, grants, infrastructure, states
Companies: spacex, starlink