We don’t need any more delays in the BEAD grant process, but there are potential delays on the horizon due to the political calendar. The delays in the BEAD grant process have felt interminable by rural folks hoping for better broadband. We are approaching the three year anniversary of the passage of the IIJA legislation that created the grant program, and there hasn’t yet been a dollar of grant funding.

What do I mean by political calendar? There is going to be a new president in the White House, and that means a change in many of the people who run various cabinets and agencies. This means a new Secretary of Commerce, the agency that sits atop the NTIA. It could mean a new head of the NTIA, which is run by an Assistant Secretary of Commerce. Changes could go a lot deeper, because it’s not unusual for a number of lower-level staff at an agency like the NTIA to leave when their appointed bosses leave.

This matters because NTIA will still play an active role in the BEAD grant process next year. The NTIA must approve the grant awards made for each State. In fact, no money will flow to grant winners until the NTIA blesses the entire pile of grants that are being proposed to be awarded by each State Broadband Office. BEAD is not like other grants where a Broadband Office can start making awards to ISPs as it approves each grant. A Broadband Office must find a solution for every unserved home, then package a detailed report to the NTIA about the grant award process. Money doesn’t flow to any grant winner until NTIA blesses all of the grants in a state. It’s also possible that the NTIA will review grant contracts with grant winners – or at least the template a state plans to use.

Changing people means disruptions at the NTIA. It could easily take much of next year to replace empty positions. During the interim, the responsibilities for keeping BEAD moving will fall to whoever is temporarily in charge at the NTIA. That could mean one of two things – a temporary head of NTIA might decide to rubber stamp everything States are doing, or they could take a cautious approach to not make any mistakes.

There could be an even bigger problem if the Republicans win the White House. Republican Senators have been complaining over the last few years that the NTIA has reached too far with some of its BEAD policies. A letter from Senator John Thune captures most of the issues. He says the NTIA has gone too far with many labor requirements. He says that BEAD rules incorrectly stress giving grants to government-owned networks. He says that the BEAD are not technology-neutral, and stress fiber over other acceptable technologies. The area of biggest unhappiness with BEAD is that State BEAD rules are pushing for low rates, which goes against the language in the legislation. He also complains that BEAD asks applicants to discuss how their proposals account for climate change – something that was not in the legislation. And finally, he thinks the NTIA should be more open to granting waivers from Buy American rules if that speeds up the construction process. I’ve heard many of these complaints from ISPs.

It’s not hard to imagine a Republican administration putting the BEAD grant process on hold until at least some of these issues are addressed. And it’s not hard to imagine that any pause due to politics could add a ton of time to the BEAD process.

There have also been rumblings from some Republicans about cutting off any unspent stimulus funding for infrastructure since they blame inflation on excess government spending. Improving broadband might be safe since better broadband is a popular issue in red states and the support for rural broadband has been largely non-partisan. However, it’s not impossible that unspent BEAD money could get slashed or curtailed if there is a larger move to cut government spending.

All of this could have been avoided if BEAD grants had been awarded within the three years since passage of the IIJA. But the glacial pace of administering BEAD has pushed the program into the middle of the normal and expected political process.