Many rural Louisianans who were promised access to fiber internet may be out of luck.
Recent changes to the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, originally set to grant Louisiana $1.3 billion for fiber expansion, will reverse the Biden administration’s fiber-first approach, and with it, the fiber expansion as planned in rural Louisiana.
Louisiana was set to start dispersing the grant funds this year through the GUMBO 2.0 program, as the first state to get its BEAD deployment plan approved by the federal government.
However, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s revamped guidance, announced last week, has stripped the federal approval, setting Louisiana back several steps from a plan to connect the whole state.
Fiber providers across the state, who just months ago said they could start laying fiber within weeks if they got the green light, will now also have to compete again for their subgrants, in what the federal government is calling a “Benefit of the Bargain Round.”
This is part of a rollback of the fiber-focused program that Lutnick says will be more efficient, save money and make federal funding available to a wider variety of connectivity options — for instance, satellite internet — not just fiber.
The commerce secretary has long been critical of the project, which failed to award funds in its first three years, but the cancellation of three states’ federal final approvals under Lutnick has further delayed the first deployments.
The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration has given states 90 days to comply with the guidelines, including moving away from fiber deployment where cheaper and less reliable satellite internet can be used to curb what Lutnick called, “wasteful spending.”