New ACLP Report: Recommendations to Accelerate BEAD

Straightforward recommendations for accelerating the award of BEAD grant funds.

The ACLP has released a new report, How to Free BEAD From its Bureaucratic Shackles, that offers President Trump, incoming Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and NTIA Administrator nominee Arielle Roth a series of straightforward recommendations for accelerating the award of BEAD grant funds.

The ACLP documents how the Biden administration used BEAD to advance its political agenda and engage in stifling micromanagement rather than prioritize the buildout of next-generation fiber networks to the millions of Americans who remain without broadband access. ACLP’s recommendations focus on freeing BEAD from its bureaucratic shackles.

“Biden bungled BEAD. It’s that simple. Three years in, not a single BEAD-funded network has been built. Trump can claim an easy win and be seen as the president who finally closed the country’s digital divide by slashing the red tape that Biden imposed on BEAD,” said Michael Santorelli, Director of the ACLP. “Our recommendations offer a straightforward roadmap for putting BEAD on track to fund broadband network construction within months rather than years.”

The ACLP’s recommendations include:

1. Removing all extra-statutory rules and requirements from BEAD so that it more closely follows the text and intent of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which created the program.
2. Ensuring that BEAD does not support or enable the regulation of broadband prices.
3. Providing clearer guidance about the role of satellite services like Starlink in BEAD. Fiber must remain the focus of BEAD, but satellite and other platforms should play a bigger role in closing connectivity gaps in hard-to-reach areas.
4. Rolling back extraneous environmental, labor, wage, and climate rules attached to BEAD grants by the Biden administration.
5. Eliminating burdensome requirements added by states to BEAD grants.
6. Prioritizing BEAD grants to established ISPs to ensure timely and cost-effective deployment.
7. Allowing states to adjust the size of the areas where BEAD funds will be deployed.

Following these recommendations will help the Trump administration earn a signature infrastructure win. BEAD represents a rare opportunity to turn a bloated government program into a streamlined high-profile win. But that requires urgency. The longer these funds remain shackled by bureaucracy, the longer millions of Americans will wait for the broadband access they were promised years ago.

Please also see our Op-Ed on Broadband Breakfast.