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  "description": "As GOP calls for speed, former BEAD chief warns of policy shifts.\n",
  "path": "/house-republicans-urge-trump-to-release-broadband-funds/",
  "publishedAt": "2025-06-06T19:04:27.000Z",
  "site": "https://broadbandbreakfast.com",
  "tags": [
    "_a letter_",
    "_since March_",
    "_a new policy notice_",
    "_testified at a House Appropriations hearing_",
    "Lutnick’s revised BEAD funding notice had just been released",
    "_an op-ed in _Charleston Gazette-Mail__",
    "_has already signaled_"
  ],
  "textContent": "WASHINGTON, June 6, 2025 – Even top GOP lawmakers called on President **Donald Trump** this week to release funding for a $42.45 billion broadband expansion program and let states start building.\n\nIn _a letter_ sent Thursday, Reps.**Brett Guthrie** , R-Ky., and **Richard Hudson** , R-N.C., urged the administration to accelerate the release of funds from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, which has been under review by Commerce Secretary **Howard Lutnick** _since March_.\n\n“We appreciate that… Lutnick is undertaking a review of the program and urge any reforms to be enacted as soon as possible,” the lawmakers wrote. “Once BEAD is reformed, we ask that you act swiftly to release these funds to the states so they can begin deployment.”\n\nBut many states have warned that Lutnick’s proposed reforms – which were formalized in _a new policy notice_ Friday – could undermine states’ strategies, forcing states to rebid projects using “technologically neutral” criteria.\n\n“We’ve asked all the states to rebid,” Lutnick _testified at a House Appropriations hearing_Thursday, promising that only the lowest-cost technology per location would win out, even if that means replacing planned fiber builds with fixed wireless or satellite. “Whichever is the most efficient option to get somebody broadband, that should be the only rule,” Lutnick said.\n\nAs of publication Friday afternoon, Lutnick’s revised BEAD funding notice had just been released. States will have 90 days to comply with the policy overhaul that eliminates Biden-era requirements, prioritizes low-cost deployment, and requires states to reopen their broadband grant processes under new, technology-neutral rules.\n\nStates will now have to reconfigure existing plans – many of which were shovel-ready and months in the making.\n\nOne such plan was West Virginia’s, which former BEAD Program Director **Evan Feinman** described in _an op-ed in _Charleston Gazette-Mail__ Thursday as a “once-in-a-generation” infrastructure project that was $150 million under budget and promised to deliver a fiber-optic connection to every home and business in the state that needed one.\n\nFeinman warned that federal changes could strip fiber from rural communities and replace it with satellite service, a change West Virginia Gov. **Patrick Morrisey** , R,****_has already signaled_. The technologies differ in terms of speed, latency, data capacity, reliability, and long-term scalability.\n\n“If the department pushes forward with these changes, it will lock these folks and these communities on the wrong side of a digital divide, with slower connections and higher monthly bills. Just the higher satellite bills alone will cost more than $800 extra a year, compared to fiber, a huge hit to family budgets just to get online,” Feinman wrote.\n\n“Let’s be clear: The plan is finished. The companies and crews are ready to go. Y’all could start building this network tomorrow. But just as the hard work setting all this up begins to bear fruit, West Virginians are getting the rug pulled out from under them again,” he said.",
  "title": "House Republicans Urge Trump to Release Broadband Funds",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-11T03:28:15.742Z"
}