Sponsors (23)
The bill boosts high‑speed connectivity and deployment flexibility (including workforce training and easier participation for small providers) but does so while removing labor protections and limiting use of equity and affordability criteria, and it risks returning unspent funds to the Treasury.
Community anchor institutions (schools, libraries, health centers) and other eligible locations can receive gigabit‑level (≥1,000 Mbps) broadband, improving high‑speed access for urban and rural communities.
Smaller providers and project applicants can exclude very high‑cost locations from their project areas and still receive funding, lowering barriers to participation and enabling more providers to deploy service.
Funding may be used for telecommunications workforce development programs, supporting training and job pipelines for broadband deployment.
Workers on funded projects lose prevailing wage and project labor agreement protections, which may lower wages and weaken labor standards for telecom construction and deployment workers.
Bans on considering diversity, equity, inclusion, local‑hiring, and labor‑composition criteria in bids reduce targeted opportunities and benefits for disadvantaged communities.
Prohibiting use of service rates or rate‑setting methodologies in scoring and banning rate caps/freezes limits policymakers' and program administrators' ability to promote subsidized low‑cost plans for renters and low‑income consumers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Introduced March 5, 2025 by Richard Hudson · Last progress March 5, 2025
Amends the BEAD program rules to change definitions, allowable uses, and grant conditions. It adds a gigabit-speed definition, renames some program elements from “Equity” to “Expansion,” requires unused allocations be returned to the Treasury after a deadline, permits telecommunications workforce development spending, requires mechanisms for removing certain costly locations from project areas, and expressly bars the NTIA, the Assistant Secretary, and eligible entities from imposing or enforcing a range of grant or bidding conditions (including prevailing wages, project labor agreements, local-hire mandates, open-access/climate/diversity requirements, and broadband rate-setting). It also clarifies that services meeting performance criteria qualify regardless of technology used.