""It was a really exciting opportunity to work on the original infrastructure act - to work with the administration and Congress on the vision and an initiative to close the digital divide once and for all," Bloomfield said, referring to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law."
""That's our jam at NTCA," she said, adding that she doesn't believe there are "any entities better suited to figuring out how to serve these un- and underserved areas" than rural broadband providers."
""The decree that Universal Service would not be available for those new builds was a final blow for a number of companies, who basically said, 'I might be able to cobble enough together to build part of the network, but I will never be able to sustain that network without support.'""
The BEAD program received $42.45 billion under the IIJA to close the digital divide after COVID revealed severe connectivity harms. Revised BEAD guidelines now emphasize technology neutrality and exclude Universal Service support for new builds. Those changes risk delivering insufficient bandwidth to many un- and underserved locations and leave no funding path for future upgrades or sustainability. As a result, some rural providers are considering withdrawal because they cannot sustain newly built networks without ongoing support. The combination of constrained technology choices and lost support undermines the goal of reliably connecting households and businesses in rural areas.
Read at Telecompetitor
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