Virginia officials and broadband providers have had the “rug pulled out from under them” by a U.S. Commerce Department policy shift on internet expansion, the state’s Broadband Advisory Council chairwoman said Monday.
Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County, said she was frustrated that the Trump administration has restructured the Biden-era Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, also known as “Internet for All.” The $42.5 billion program, part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, had prioritized fiber broadband over satellite and other wireless internet delivery systems to serve more rural regions.
According to a National Telecommunications and Information Administration notice issued Friday, the program will now be “tech neutral,” and all internet service provider applications for funding must be rescinded, according to the notice.
Elsewhere in the notice, the NTIA eliminated the program’s requirement for affordability and low-cost plans, and has put on hold a determination on acceptable “non-deployment funding” while rescinding any such funding that states had preliminarily approved.
Virginia was the first state in the nation to submit a proposal and plans for a share of BEAD’s $42.5 billion to extend broadband service to underserved, mostly rural communities. The Department of Commerce had approved Virginia’s $1.48 billion plan, and the commonwealth launched its application process in December, according to the website of the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.
The state’s non-deployment funding included such tasks as bringing cellphone service to dead zones.
“It feels like the rug is being pulled out from us,” Boysko said. “We put an awful lot of time and energy into this, not only through the legislature and [Department of Housing and Community Development] but also all of the communities who have spent months working with their providers and trying to put together a package that works for their communities. And it seems that the federal government doesn’t care what’s best for their community.” 
It is unclear how many internet service providers had applied for BEAD funding in Virginia, nor how many applications had been approved prior to the notice. Todd Weinstein, deputy director of the Department of Housing and Community Development, wrote in an email exchange that BEAD rules do not allow his office to publicly announce awards or publicize prior application results. The housing department administers state and federal broadband programs.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, in a recent address to a Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association-Broadband Association of Virginia conference, said that the state had received $3.22 billion in BEAD applications for broadband deployment, covering each of its 133,000 eligible locations. Multiple bidders were competing for similar ZIP codes, which accounts for a number higher than the $1.48 billion expected award to the state.
Requests for comment on Monday to Youngkin’s office and to U.S. Reps. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, and Ben Cline, R-Botetourt County, were not returned.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who co-authored the law that created BEAD and who last month joined a group of senators calling on the Trump administration to release the funding and refrain from changing the program, said through a spokeswoman that the law focused on “quality of service, not type of service.”
“NTIA should be using this program to deliver future-proof networks that can meet the demands of today and more importantly, the demands of the future, as new advances like AI require more bandwidth,” he said via email. “This new NOFO [notice of funding opportunity] fails that test and sets back states like Virginia that have moved quickly to meet the law’s requirements.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said through a spokeswoman that he was “still digging into the changes.”
“However, I’m concerned that this will set back our plan to achieve universal broadband, and my team has reached out to [DHCD] to see how it would impact Virginia,” he said via email. “I will keep working to ensure every Virginian has access to high-speed internet.”
The new policy opens bidding for BEAD projects to any technology that provides 100 megabits per second downloads and 20 megabits per second for uploads, with 100 milliseconds or less latency (the time it takes for information to travel from a browser to a server and back). The tech would be able to scale speeds as connectivity needs and new technologies develop, according to the notice.
Gary Wood, CEO of Central Virginia Electric Cooperative and its Firefly Broadband, is skeptical that so-called low-earth orbit satellite services such as Elon Musk’s Starlink can consistently match the connection speed that fiber to homes provides, at a cheaper cost, much less keep up with changes such as the coming of 6G.
Firefly did not apply for any BEAD funds, Wood said. His company is achieving deployment goals in its coverage region through previous federal and state funds. Wood said it is his understanding that satellite connection speeds can be affected where many subscribers are located together. Fiber provides 100 megabits day and night, whether use is low or high at a given time, he said.
Issues with wireless networks such as those that cellphone companies market include signal strength based on location, number of users, even outside vegetation, Wood said.
“I am disappointed, if that is the direction that the nation takes for service to our rural communities … for bringing them up to speed, so to speak, and bridging the digital divide, as we call it,” Wood said.
“If we leave them with a service that is significantly less reliable or affordable or that has more limited and more challenging routes in the future to continuously build on its speed … we’re going to end up with a rural communication system that someone will have to go back and address again at a future time, when we find that America still hasn’t delivered on having universal access for true broadband.”
According to Starlink’s website, residential service is $120 a month. Most national fiber broadband services, co-ops and cellular companies in the region advertise at less than $100 per month for 100 megabits download speed. Another satellite service, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, has yet to hit the market.
While Starlink’s self-installed receiver kit is $349, significantly more than a modem or cable installation fee, Friday’s BEAD notice indicates that the low-earth orbit satellite companies must provide that equipment free to new subscribers, whether they be individuals or groups.
“It sounds like somebody just wanted to do a favor for the satellite industry, and not really care about the long-term effectiveness of what’s going to be best in each community,” Boysko said.
Evan Feinman, a Lynchburg native who ran the BEAD program during the Biden administration and early in the Trump administration, said the quality from satellite won’t be as good, but the bids will be lower, and according to the notice, the low bids will win.
“The states were really in charge of taking projects and making sure that we were going to be able to get good connections at good prices for rural communities,” said Feinman, who was Virginia’s chief broadband advisor during Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration. “They have taken all of that discretion away from the states, and they’ve thrown in the trash all of the work that states have done.”
ISPs had spent money and employee hours crafting their proposals.
“I think there are a lot of busy telecom attorneys this morning and over the weekend, and I would be stunned if there were not lawsuits filed somewhere,” he said in a Monday phone call.
The most recent figures about internet availability come from a 2023 report written by Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. The report determined that 13% of Virginians remained unserved or underserved. That was about 383,000 locations. Of that number, about 131,000 locations were unserved, with no funding yet awarded.
The NTIA notified all states in April that it would extend their final plan deadlines by 90 days. States had a year after their initial plans were approved to file those plans. The Biden administration approved Virginia’s on July 26, so the state now will have until about Oct. 24 to submit its final proposal.
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