Trump administration poised to ‘strand rural America with worse internet' to help Musk, official warns
Small town USA is facing a 'significant risk' that the Trump administration is going to abandon key elements of a $42.45bn Biden-era plan to connect rural communities to high-speed internet so that Elon Musk can get even richer, a top departing commerce department official warned in an email.
Evan Feinman, who headed up the so-called Bead program for the last three years, urged governors across the country to lobby their congressional delations in Washington to stop the Trump administration from implementing plans he said could have 'deeply negative outcomes' for American homes and businesses.
'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.
A copy of the email, which was first reported by Politico, was seen by the Guardian.
The Bead program, which stands for Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, was passed with bipartisan support in 2021 and aimed to connect tens of millions of underserved homes and communities in rural America to high speed internet.
In administering the program, the Biden administration called on states to favor a certain kind of broadband technology – fiber – because it provides reliable and affordable service to consumers.
Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has said he wants to re-evaluate the Bead program and make it technology 'neutral'. That change is likely to favor Elon Musk's company, Starlink, which owns about 62% of all operating satellites. It would be far less expensive for communities to be connected to high speed internet service through satellites, but most experts agree the service would not be as fast or reliable as fiber, and would cost consumers more.
The buildout of fiber networks across rural communities was also expected to create tens of thousands of jobs. Some investments – like the creation of AI data centers – are also reliant on states having fiber connections.
Musk himself as expressed disdain for the Bead program, once telling voters before November's election that he thought the program should be brought down to 'zero'. While the program has also been criticized by some Republican legislators for being too bureaucratic, it has been widely seen as a boon for rural states.
But Lutnick's call for a review of the program has left states 'in limbo', Feinman said. In particular three states – Louisiana, Delaware, and Nevada – have already had their statewide plans to spend billions of dollars in Bead funding approved, but are now waiting for the federal government to release the funds.
'Shovels could already be in the ground' in those three states, Feinman said, were it not for the Trump administration's delays.
But Feinman suggested it was not too late for US states to lobby the administration to tweak the program – like abandoning labor and wage-related provisions – but leave the most significant aspects of it unchanged.
He said in his letter that the administration had not yet made decisions about whether states had to scrap plans they have for the buildout of fiber optic networks in their states and start fresh, or whether they would be allowed to proceed.
'Reach out to your congressional delegation and reach out to the Trump administration and tell them to strip out the needless requirements, but not to strip away from states the flexibility to get the best connections for their people,' Feinman wrote.
The commerce department did not respond to a request for comment. Starlink has not commented on the possible change to the Bead program.
Do you have a tip? Please contact Stephanie.Kirchgaessner@theguardian.com or on Signal at 646-886-8761.
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