In 2021, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with a bold promise: bring high-speed internet to every American household. At the heart of that promise was BEAD, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deploym ent program, a $42.45 billion effort to finally connect the rural and underserved communities left behind by decades of uneven telecom investment.
But nearly three years later, the program's progress is being called into question. Not because the funding isn't there, it is. Every U.S. state and territory has received funding, and most have submitted deployment plans. The issue, critics say, lies in how that money is being used.
