The head of a Biden program that could help rural broadband has left

Evan Feinman is out as the director of the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, reports ProPublica’s Craig Silverman in a Bluesky post today. BEAD aims to bring high-bandwidth internet to underserved areas of America, much of which is rural. Silverman shared screenshots from a department-wide email Feinman sent on Friday, in which he warned there would be “deeply negative outcomes” if the program shifts from fiber build-outs to using satellite-based internet like that which Elon Musk’s Starlink offers. “Feinman’s term ended and he was not reappointed,” Silverman writes.

This month, Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick announced a “rigorous review” of the program, which he said “has not connected a single person to the internet,” something he blamed on “woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations.”

BEAD was introduced as part of the $1 trillion Biden-era infrastructure spending bill. The program offers $42.5 billion in grants to states to use toward building out internet infrastructure that would provide at least a 100Mbps down and 20Mbps up connection to underserved parts of the country. The program prioritizes fiber-based internet, but allows for other kinds where fiber isn’t proven to be tenable.

Getting from the start of the program to actual network buildouts has been a long, multi-step process that started with the FCC making a map of US broadband access and moves through state proposals, challenges to the FCC’s map, and selection of ISPs that will be paid to build new service. According to the government BEAD progress-tracking site, three states — Delaware, Louisiana, and Nevada — had made it to the last step of issuing a final proposal for public comment before the site stopped being updated regularly.

Lutnick’s announcement mirrors much of Republicans’ ongoing backlash to the program, some of whom say that Biden had blocked Starlink from being part of it for political reasons, as The New York Times wrote on March 5th. The Times notes FCC denials, most recently in 2023, that kept Musk’s company from getting $886 million in Universal Service Fund subsidies for a separate rural broadband program. The FCC said said the company couldn’t “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service.” 

The rules that Lutnick may propose could benefit Musk’s company, which was “expected to get up to $4.1 billion” under the BEAD program’s initial rules, according to The Wall Street Journal in March. The outlet said Starlink could get as much as $20 billion under Lutnick’s overhaul of the program. 

In his outgoing staff email, Feinman wrote that the overhaul could strand “all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer,” adding that it would be “yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington.”

In the quotes from the email below, Feinman writes what he says will “definitely happen” next.

1. Removing the “woke” requirements from the program. This will include all provisions related to labor and wage, climate resiliency, middle class affordability, etc. I do not regard the inclusion or removal of these provisions as significant; they were inserted by the prior administration for messaging/political purposes, and were never central to the mission of the program, nor were they significant in the actual conduct of the program.

2. A “pause” that isn’t a pause. The administration wants to make changes, but doesn’t want to be seen slowing things down. They can’t have both. States will have to be advised that they should either slow down or stop doing subgrantee selection.

3. Some kind of limit on spending, per location. This could be fine. There weren’t any cases of a state planning to spend hundreds of thousands to connect one location anyway. However, if it’s heavy handed or imposed in a manner that ignores the needs of rural communities, it could be very bad – more on that below.

4. Changes to the treatment of fiber and satellite. Generally, even though the law pretty clearly requires that fiber builds be the program’s “priority projects,” the administration wants to increase the usage of low-earth satellites and diminish the usage of fiber.

5. The NTIA team will try to persuade the administration to embrace the best version of their chosen direction, and the BEAD team – especially the program officers out in the states – will do everything they can to support the states in conducting the program and dealing with changes.

He goes on to list what he considers are likely impacts of the changes.

1. Delays in getting broadband to the people. Some states are on the 1 yard line. A bunch are on the 5 yard line. More will be getting there every week. These more-sweeping changes will only cause delays. The administration could fix the problems with the program via waiver and avoid slowdowns. Shovels could already be in the ground in three states, and they could be in the ground in half the country by the summer without the proposed changes to project selection.

2. More people will get Starlink/Kuiper, and fewer people will get fiber connection. This could be dramatic, or it could be measured, depending on where the admin sets the threshold limit, and whether states are permitted to award projects above the new threshold on the basis of value per dollar, or if they’re forced to take the cheapest proposal, even if it provides poorer service.

3. The 3 states with approved Final Proposals remain in limbo. They are currently held in NIST review regarding their proposed FPFRs (the budgets accompanying their approved final proposals).

This makes no sense – these states are ready to go, and they got the job done on time, on budget, and have plans that achieve universal coverage. If the administration cares about getting shovels in the ground, states with approved Final Proposals should move forward, ASAP.

4. West Virginia (and soon additional states) who have completed their work, but don’t have approved Final Proposals also remain in limbo. They have a final proposal ready to go that gets exceptional service to all West Virginia homes and businesses. Like the three states with approved Final Proposals, only the current administration stands between them and getting shovels in the ground. If the administration cares about getting things done, they should allow any state that comes forward with a Final Proposal under the old rules in the next couple of months move forward with that plan.

5. No decision has been made about how much of the existing progress the 30 states who are already performing subgrantee selection should be allowed to keep. The administration simply cannot say whether the time, taxpayer funds, and private capital that were spent on those processes will be wasted and how much states will have to re-do.

6. The wireless industry will be, effectively, shut out of the BEAD program. There will be few, if any, locations that are above any new cost limit that will be able to be more cheaply served by fixed wireless than low earth satellites.

You can read the remainder of the email in Silverman’s screenshots below.