Could funding from the infrastructure bill snarl the broadband supply chain?

Would the sprawling infrastructure deal's $65 billion for broadband expansions keep fiber flowing throughout the country, or worsen the supply chain logjam? Analysts at Morgan Stanley point to AT&T’s announcement that it expects to fall short of its 2021 fiber deployment target due to supply chain issues. Other fiber players, including Frontier Communications, Lumen Technologies and Windstream, indicated they aren’t yet facing supply chain constraints. Still, analysts expressed concern “that adding this infrastructure funding program on top of the accelerated 5G and fiber builds in the industry risks further congesting the supply chain and impacting labor availability and costs as well as potentially fueling inflationary pressures further.” Blair Levin of New Street Research said, “There is a bit of a pig in a python phenomenon in that we already have a combination of four 5G deployments, a bunch of companies upgrading from copper to fiber for pure market reasons and others building out fiber due to pre-existing FCC funding.” What AT&T said about constraints in the market “is consistent with that” Levin said, and added that labor positions for wired networks are easier to fill than some wireless positions because they don’t require the same level of expertise needed to, for instance, climb macro towers.