Disruption of Federal Grants. It seems almost inevitable that Congress is going to pull back some or all future funding for the Digital Equity Grants that are part of the BEAD program. Some in Congress are already warning the NTIA not to award the current grants that are under review.

The BEAD grant program will change. Congress is likely to reverse some of the BEAD provisions that Senators have been complaining about, like the BEAD requirement that requires a low-rate option. However, BEAD is ultimately designed to be a state grant program, and a lot of States are going to fight hard against trying to direct funds away from fiber. With that said, it’s likely that a lot more BEAD funding will go to satellite than earlier estimates. I predict that the change of administration and a swap out of folks at NTIA is going to result in at least a six month delay in the grant process.

The FCC Will Stay the Course. The new FCC will not change the agency as much as you might expect from a change in administration. New Chairman Carr will act quickly to reverse the current FCC rulings on net neutrality and discrimination. But otherwise, there won’t be a lot of revisiting of other recent decisions. Assuming that Chairman Carr will tackle what he addressed in Project 2025, the FCC will spend a lot of energy trying to free up new 5G spectrum and investigating issues associated with Section 230 and content moderation.

Job Well Done? I predict at some point that the FCC and/or the NTIA will declare at some point this year that the rural broadband problem has largely been solved, relieving the federal government of any obligation to fund any more broadband infrastructure.

FWA Will have Another Strong Year. Some industry analysts have written off FWA cellular broadband as a temporary flash in the pan. I predict that T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T will continue to collectively add 900,000+ customers per quarter again this year. Any increased inflation in the economy will drive the FWA numbers even higher.

Universal Service Fund Will Change. I predict that the Supreme Court is going to rule that Congress erred when it gave the FCC the authority to operate the USF and to establish fees to fund it. That’s going to force Congress to scramble to revamp the popular program. Congress will be forced to fix the funding issues. I predict Congress will create a tax that will be charged against a larger base that includes large users of the Internet like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others. All of the changes to USF will probably mean that the launch of the $9 billion 5G Fund for Rural America will be delayed or shelved for the year.

The Mad Scramble to Buy Fiber Businesses Will Continue. There is still a glut of investment capital looking for a place to land, and a lot of that money is going to be aimed at buying existing fiber-based ISPs.

RDOF Troubles. I don’t think we’re done with RDOF defaults. This might be further exacerbated by any movement by the administration to claw back RDOF funding that hasn’t resulted in infrastructure.

Cable Companies Will Tame Their Losses. While large cable companies will continue to collectively lose customers, the rate of losses will slow as the companies focus on holding their market share. The large cable companies collectively lost 265,000 customers in the third quarter of this year. However, Comcast and Charter both said they would have had small gains except for the one-time losses due to the end of ACP.