“We are getting an awful lot done,” Evan Feinman, who heads up the federal project to expand broadband infrastructure into unserved and underserved areas, told officials largely from the broadband private sector, in Silicon Valley. “And I believe that whether that leadership is the current leadership, or future leadership, the goal will be to get this done for the American people. And that’s what’s going to happen.”
Feinman, whose official title is director of the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program being administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), was the keynote speaker at the Connecting Communities Summit Wednesday at the headquarters of Tarana Wireless.
The BEAD program was designed and envisioned as a 10-year project, said Feinman, and changes in political leadership were expected.
“Political changes, or not, there was going to be significant personnel turnover over the course of a decade, regardless,” he noted.
“Certainly, I could be shown the door,” Feinman said, acknowledging the changes that come with any election. “But I am not planning to leave, nor any of my team. We don’t have reason to believe, at present, that there is going to be any sort of significant shift.”
The BEAD program, which is well underway, with money flowing to states to begin the process of awarding grants to Internet service providers for building out infrastructure, is part of President Joe Biden’s signature Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is investing more than $1 trillion in federal funding toward improving infrastructure of all sorts. Many of these projects are in motion, making their derailment difficult, though many of them are located in states and regions carried by President-elect Donald Trump.
“I don’t anticipate any of that funding gets clawed back,” Diane Rinaldo, the former acting administrator of the NTIA during the first Trump administration, said in comments at the summit. “I think there will be a big push to get the money out the door, and get projects moving, and get people connected.”
Watch for the BEAD program to possibly become more “technology neutral,” she added, signaling a potential move away from what observers have described as “fiber only” toward other communications infrastructure options, like satellite systems.
“I can see the Trump administration move toward a more tech-neutral approach, as opposed to a fiber preference,” Rinaldo said, leaving unmentioned options like Starlink, an Internet service provider that uses satellites. The company is headed by Elon Musk, one of Trump’s largest donors, and who — along with tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, a new Trump initiative whose mission is to slash government bureaucracy, remaking government in the model of the private sector.
It also remains to be seen how certain features of the infrastructure programs will be preserved or reimagined. A central component of BEAD is its focus on equity, charged with designing solutions that more directly aim to serve minority and vulnerable populations.
When asked by Government Technology how equity will be considered by the new Trump administration, Rinaldo reiterated her earlier remarks.
The new administration’s focus will likely lean toward being “more technology neutral,” she said. “To be able to ensure that we get as many citizens connected as possible. I think that they will be singularly focused on that.
“Their aim is to get this done as soon as possible,” Rinaldo said. “So, they’re going to want to be sure that the best available technologies are ruling the day, and they’re able to get coverage across the United States.”
