Multiple efforts are underway to reform the beleaguered $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program.
Representative Richard Hudson (R-NC), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology – and Keynoter at the Free State Foundation's upcoming Seventeenth Annual Policy Conference – recently introduced legislation designed to "eliminate the burdensome Biden regulations so that we can get money out the door and shovels into the ground as soon as possible."
In his Opening Statement before "Fixing Biden's Broadband Blunder," a hearing held on March 5, 2025, Chairman Hudson unveiled the Streamlining Program Efficiency and Expanding Deployment (SPEED) for BEAD Act. In the accompanying Press Release, he pointed out that "not a cent of the BEAD funds have been put towards actual deployment for even one household. This is unacceptable. Our rural communities need to be fully connected, and this legislation will do that."
Specifically, the SPEED for BEAD Act would:
- Clarify that BEAD Program money is to be used for two purposes: broadband deployment and workforce development. Consistent with that refined focus, the bill would replace the word "Equity" with the word "Expansion" in the program's title.
- Expressly require the return to the U.S. Treasury of unused funds.
- Prohibit the consideration, when awarding grants, of the following: prevailing wages, project labor agreements, union workforces, collective bargaining, local hiring, commitments to union neutrality, labor peace agreements, workforce composition (or the reporting thereof), climate change, the regulation of network management practices (including data caps), open access requirements, and certain letter of credit requirements.
- Provide applicants greater flexibility with respect to service area.
- Expand the definition of "reliable broadband service," consistent with the principle of technological neutrality, to include "any broadband service that meets the performance criteria … without regard to the type of technology by which such service is provided."
- Expound upon the existing ban on the regulation of rates (see below).
Regarding rate regulation, the bill makes clear that neither NTIA nor the states may:
[R]egulate, set, or otherwise mandate the rates charged for broadband service or the methodologies used to calculate such rates, for consumers generally or for any subset of consumers, including through the capping or freezing of such rates, the encouragement of another entity to regulate such rates, or the use of rates as part of an application scoring process.
The SPEED for BEAD Act explicitly would ban any such forms of rate regulation even if approved prior to its enactment or adopted "in conjunction with the requirement to offer a low-cost broadband service option."
The same day, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick issued a Statement announcing that:
Under [his] leadership, the Commerce Department has launched a rigorous review of the BEAD program. The Department is ripping out the Biden Administration's pointless requirements. It is revamping the BEAD program to take a tech-neutral approach that is rigorously driven by outcomes, so states can provide internet access for the lowest cost. Additionally, the Department is exploring ways to cut government red tape that slows down infrastructure construction.
Since the passage of the legislation that created the BEAD Program, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, in 2021, FSF scholars repeatedly have criticized the Biden Administration for its prioritization of extraneous policy preferences that discouraged proven broadband providers from participating, raised costs, and ground implementation to a standstill.
They include impermissible rate regulation, inappropriate labor- and climate-related mandates, the unjustified promotion of government-owned networks, and a pro-fiber bias that brazenly defied the statute's technologically neutral intent.
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