There has been a lot of speculation since the election that the BEAD grant program is going to get revamped. I’ve heard speculation that a lot more money might go to satellite broadband. There have been rumblings that some in Congress want to relax some of the harsher BEAD rules that make it harder and more expensive to build new broadband networks.

In the midst of this speculation, the State of Louisiana announced that it has tentatively chosen the winners of its $748 million BEAD program. The next step is for the State to submit a report to the NTIA asking for permission to make formal grant offers to the winning ISPs.

The BEAD process in Louisiana seems to have worked in the way that Congress intended when it formulated the rules. More than 95% of the 140,000 BEAD-eligible locations are slated to get fiber from the awards, with the rest going to satellite and fixed wireless. 70% of the BEAD dollars are being awarded to ISPs based in the State. Over half of the award went to a consortium of local ISPs.

While Louisiana was the fastest to the finish line, a lot more states plan to open BEAD grant portals before the end of this year and start to accept grant applications. While it look a long time to reach this point, a lot of states are now on a path to choose grant winners.

This raises the interesting question if it’s too late for a new administration to make major changes to the BEAD program. It seems highly likely that Louisiana, and probably a few more states will have approval from the NTIA to make grant awards before the January 20 inauguration. A whole lot more states will have a list of tentative grant winners by then for most of their available BEAD funds.

There is also the question of the process needed to change the BEAD rules. The BEAD rules were created by Congress, and it seems that Congress would have to act to change the rules. It seems plausible that Congress could act to relax some of the BEAD rules it doesn’t like. I know that ISPs would welcome changes that remove some of the burdensome administration and reporting rules that come with BEAD. Congress could change some of these rules next year and make the changes retroactive for any grants that have already been awarded. There would be relief around the industry to see rules like mandatory environmental studies and required low rates eliminated.

A new administration will almost certainly change the folks heading the NTIA, and in doing so would control the purse strings for the many states that haven’t finished the BEAD award process. My understanding of the process is that once NTIA blesses a State’s grant awards that the money is flowed to the States to begin awarding grants. I have to think that Louisiana and other states will fight hard against any federal attempt to claw back funds that have already been awarded to build fiber.

A new administration and a new NTIA could easily change the grant award rules for states that haven’t completed the grant process. But we can’t forget about Congress in this process. Rural broadband is a popular cause for politicians, and I wonder how many would vote for drastic changes that would impact their own states? Could Congress really get a majority vote to cut back or drastically modify a popular program? Would the administration really want to use political capital for this issue when there are many other prioities for the new administration?

There are several ways the administration could give more funding for satellite. For example, they could pause work at NTIA until they figure out the path to do that. But if Congress has to go along with any major changes, this is not necessarily an easy path. Putting BEAD on hold would mean the administration would be delaying broadband implementation – something that Republican Senators have been complaining about the NTIA for the last year.

The administration can obviously do anything it wants with BEAD starting with the inauguration, with the caveat that Congress is going to want a say in big changes. But I’m not sure that there is much that can done about grant awards that have already been funded before that date