Would Trump upend Biden’s $42 billion broadband push?

One looming question in telecom land is what happens to President Joe Biden’s mammoth $42.45 billion internet expansion effort — known as the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program — if former President Donald Trump wins the White House in November 2024. The big-ticket broadband program is at an inflection point. While the Biden administration has signed off spending plans from most states and territories, it will be many months before any internet construction projects begin — the first groundbreaking won’t start until 2025, under the next president. And the administration’s various grant requirements have sparked partisan tussles throughout the last year, especially over the implementation of broadband affordability provisions and other requirements around climate resiliency and the use of union labor. Those squabbles have led to delayed approval in some cases, even as they stoked simmering rancor in Washington (DC). Republicans — backed in some cases by the broadband lobby — have led the charge against Biden’s BEAD requirements. And many believe a Trump administration may revisit these policy cuts.