The director of the biggest national bandwidth program in US history emailed his coworkers on Sunday morning with a moving email. Evan Feinman also cautioned that millions of rural Americans might experience slower online frequencies if regulations are altered in favor of Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider .
Prior to March 16, Feinman served as the director of the$ 42.5 billion account known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, known as the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment system. Feinman raises the concern about proposed changes to BEAD in the internet that ProPublica’s Craig Silverman first reported .  ,
The new administration seems to want to make changes that ignore the obvious way set out by Congress, increase the number of homes and businesses in America with grain relationships, and reduce those who have satellite connections, according to Feinman.
He refers to Starlink by dish. Although only two prototype satellites are already in the sky, compared to over 7, 000 for Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper is officially eligible for Ring funding. ( Geostationary satellite internet providers like Hughesnet and Viasat are not eligible for BEAD funding because they do not meet the latency standards. )
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is a division of the Department of Commerce, distributes BEAD’s funds to each position. The NTIA obviously favored expanding fibre to remote areas, which is commonly accepted as the gold standard , under Biden’s administration.
According to a report released by the Wall Street Journal, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick intends to view Ring more “technology-neutral.” That would increase Starlink’s revenue from$ 4.1 billion to$ 20 billion, from the previous estimate of$ 4.1 billion.  ,
” Some of the frightful scenarios that I’ve been hearing from people close to NTIA and the Commerce Department would give Elon Musk 50 % or more,” said Gigi Sohn, executive director of the American Association for Public Broadband, CNET.
Blair Levin, a former FCC chief of staff and New Street Research scientist, said,” Lutnick apparently believes, like Trump and like Musk, that paying for grain is wasted money.”
In some places, grain costs a lot. In a previous interview, a representative for the Texas Comptroller claimed that some rural communities in West Texas would have to pay as much as$ 130, 000 to connect to fiber.
Where the NTIA determines the amount of Ring funds Starlink will be able to receive may influence how many. A source informed me that the , a bill introduced in the House earlier in March, actually had a price level of$ 25, 000 per site for grain, but it was later removed. The state’s broadband office could turn to “alternative technologies” like Starlink if an area exceeded that number.  ,
Sohn, who worries the NTIA might set a price-per-location model that favors satellite, expressed concern about this. ” We’ll do that if we go back in five years and say,” Oh gee, there’s still a huge rural digital divide in this country,” they say.
According to Feinman, this switch from fiber to satellite would “do a disservice to rural and small-town America.” This is due to two factors: price and speed with Starlink’s service. It hasn’t demonstrated its ability to meet BEAD’s speed standards, and it’s also significantly more expensive than most at$ 120 per month in most areas.
CNET’s request for comment was not immediately addressed by Starlink or Commerce Department spokespeople.  ,
Can Starlink advance in the future?
Starlink’s speeds, according to critics, don’t meet the BEAD speed standards for 20 Mbps upload, 100 Mbps download, and 100 Mbps latency. Latency is the only requirement Starlink is currently meeting, which is still significantly worse than the average US.
It’s just throwing money down the toilet, Sohn said,” This is a once-in-a-lifetime investment in broadband and to give it to expensive, slow service that’s not scalable, that’s not future-proof.”
According to Ookla data, Starlink’s speeds have actually decreased as more users have joined the network. ( Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of Ookla, owns it. )
Starlink has launched thousands of satellite launches since it first launched in 2019 and has also added millions of new customers. Even as Starlink sent thousands of more satellites into the sky, speeds have dropped, making it currently unavailable for customers in many US cities.
Levin said,” I’m not sure Lutnick is aware of this.” Starlink has a “waiting list.” They have a waiting list because they are out of room.
Starlink has publicly stated that its new satellites will address the capacity issues, especially if millions of additional homes connect via BEAD, but it hasn’t demonstrated that they will.  ,
It simply doesn’t cut the mustard as a future technology, Sohn said.  ,
A popular idiom in the internet world is known as Nielsen’s law, which states that a high-end internet user’s connection speed increases by roughly 50 % annually, doubles every 21 months. Since 1983, this has been the case every year, and Feinman is concerned about it. Starlink may be able to handle applications in the future, even though it hasn’t demonstrated it by the FCC’s definition.  ,  ,
What will come next?
There is a lot of change right now for BEAD. Any day now, Lautnick is expected to release new rules for the program, which helps to explain the urgency in Feinman’s email.  ,
Feinman wrote to his colleagues,” Tell your congressional delegation to strip out the needless requirements, but not to strip away from states the freedom to get the best connections for their people,” in a letter.
The 5 Calls app can be downloaded from the or store if you want to speak with your elected representatives about changes to the BEAD program. The app gathers phone numbers for their offices, gathers information on various issues, and creates scripts for them.