Brookings

In his most recent State of the Union address, President Joe Biden highlighted the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program for connecting unserved and underserved locations to broadband. However, in the same address, President Biden went on to declare that “when we do these projects, we’re going to buy American...I’m also announcing new standards to require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America.” The problem is that the country can close the rural digital divide in the next few years, or it can enforce a strict

The North Star of communications policy should be to make services faster, better, and cheaper for all. Yet, next year, about 50 million Americans could find that their access to the core communications service of our time—broadband—has become slower, worse, and more expensive, with many even likely to be disconnected. That shift would constitute the biggest step any country has ever taken to widen, rather than close, its digital divide. The reason for the potential debacle?

In 2023, broadband policy debates will center on how states expend tens of billions of dollars to deploy broadband networks in unserved and underserved areas, most through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. But that will not be the most consequential broadband deployment of the year.