NRECA CEO Jim Matheson sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on September 16 reiterating his call for much-needed reforms to put the federal BEAD program back on track to deliver reliable, future-proof broadband to rural America.
The letter comes after NTIA announced a supplemental round of BEAD deployment funding aimed at addressing unserved locations left out of program plans because of subgrantee withdrawals, program defaults or FCC map changes.
Matheson urged several changes to both the initial and forthcoming supplemental deployment phases, including:
- Increasing cost thresholds to better reflect equipment/labor cost increases and supply chain issues;
- Increasing the Build America, Buy America de minimis threshold to meet today’s market realities while eliminating the arbitrary minimum $1 million per project cap; and
- Removing extra-statutory mandates—such as requiring statutorily exempt pole owners to adhere to FCC pole attachment rules—that increase regulatory burdens and costs.
Matheson also called on Lutnick to put BEAD dollars toward other important efforts, including streamlining the state and local permitting process, increasing rural middle mile network capacity, expanding the national broadband workforce and offering feedback on how a potential pole replacement fund could be structured.
