WTA & National and State Industry Associations Express Concerns About BEAD Rate Recommendation

Yesterday, WTA joined a large group of national and state trade associations representing small and large broadband providers in sending a letter to the Secretary of Commerce expressing concerns that a “growing numbers of the hundreds of local and regional rural broadband providers we represent are increasingly concerned about their ability to participate” in the BEAD program.

The letter states that “without significant and immediate changes of approach toward its implementation, we are concerned the program will fail to advance our collective goal of connectivity for all in America. We and our members sincerely want this program to work, but we believe that your agency’s administration of the low-cost service option requirement in particular risks putting the overall success of BEAD in jeopardy…Allowing, and in fact mandating, unrealistically low rates can undermine our shared goal of providing affordable broadband to those who need it most by making participation economically infeasible for rural broadband providers.”

It goes on to recommend that NTIA “require each state to revise the low-cost service option rate proposed or approved in its Initial Proposal so that the rate is more reasonably tied to providers’ realistic costs, such as by using the FCC’s Urban Rate Survey benchmark” as well as several other modifications to state plans.