How Federal Changes Could Derail BEAD - Episode 659 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:12)
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm excited to be talking again with Sarah Morris, who is currently the Managing Director of Technology at Waxman Strategies, but had worked on the BEAD program and before that was someone that I greatly looked up to at the OTI, the

Sarah Morris (00:36)
Open Technology Institute.

Christopher Mitchell (00:38)
Yeah, I was just like off

his stuff. was just, ugh. That's the way my brain is lately. So Sarah, you've been on the show before, but it's wonderful to have you back. Thanks for coming.

Sarah Morris (00:46)
Thanks Chris, I think it's been a while since I've been on, but it is lovely as always to be on the show talking about one of my favorite topics, connecting the country to affordable, reliable Internet

Christopher Mitchell (00:56)
Right, something you cannot get away from. you're at Waxman Strategies, which means I think you're being strategic. Why don't you give us a sense of what you are doing in this position now?

Sarah Morris (00:59)
No.

Yeah, so Waxman Strategies is values-driven consulting firm ⁓ led by Henry Waxman's son, Michael Waxman. Historically has had a healthcare practice and an environmental practice. I'm standing up their technology practice. doing a lot of, working on a lot of the same issues that I did ⁓ both prior to going into government and while I was in government, broadband connectivity, helping keep our Internet safe, secure.

our data private as appropriate, lots of exciting things to come and really working on building that portfolio and helping clients in partnership maintain the Internet that we all want and deserve.

Christopher Mitchell (01:44)
Yeah, and you have basically a history of public interest, technology focus. So very fitting. What was your position at NTIA? I forget the exact title. And even if I remembered, apparently I would not be able to say it.

Sarah Morris (01:56)
So there were two different ones. When I started at NTIA, I was a senior advisor for broadband. So I was all BEAD all the time helping Alan Davidson and the team stand up the suite of broadband programs set forth in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. So BEAD, middle mile, digital equity, and then helping with some of the expansions around tribal broadband as well.

After we announced the allocations for the states in the BEAD program, after we spent essentially the better part of a year figuring out how much money each state was going to get, we made that announcement. A week later, I went on maternity leave after I had my daughter, came back, and at that time, our principal deputy assistant secretary, April McLean Delaney, was planning to leave the agency to run, which she did successfully, for the

a house seat in Maryland. So then I stepped into the principal deputy assistant secretary role. So Alan's number two at NTIA.

Christopher Mitchell (02:52)
Excellent.

And in there, I feel like you had to deal with a lot of challenges, but it also, some of the people I've talked to, and including yourself, it sounded like it was quite rewarding. So it wasn't all abuse all the time.

Sarah Morris (03:03)
Yeah, it was the hardest I've ever worked in my entire life. It was thrilling. It was exciting. It was the most mission aligned work I've ever done. I, you know, I, the BEAD program is a once in a generation investment. Hopefully it will still be. But it was truly rewarding to work on something so big and so

Christopher Mitchell (03:16)
We thought it was. Sorry.

Sarah Morris (03:26)
really the culmination of all the work I had done prior to that on broadband access and adoption.

Christopher Mitchell (03:30)
Yeah, and I just want to salute you. feel like it's wonderful to see people take their expertise to government, work in public service, knowing that you're going to face tremendous criticism no matter how it goes. And so I always try to, even when I disagree with everything that someone does, I always want to try to honor their service. And I'm not thinking of you there. I'm thinking of some of the people that are currently in a position related to that. But as we're talking today, and we're going to be releasing this as soon as we can,

Sarah Morris (03:43)
Hahaha.

You

Christopher Mitchell (03:59)
⁓ But this week we learned of kind of like I would say I described as secret caps, but basically, ⁓ you know, in June, ⁓ the Trump administration's NTIA changed the BEAD program to push more rural households towards satellite. And then last week the states delivered their plans, many of them. And then this week it emerged that there's kind of another push to try to force more.

Sarah Morris (04:03)
Thank

Christopher Mitchell (04:24)
rural homes into having a satellite service. And then just recently the NTIA has released a myth versus fact sheet about what's happening in which I would say they confirmed the article that I wrote about what was happening, but they did it in a way that said that I was wrong and a bad person if you sort of take ⁓ the implications of it. But I wanted to talk with you about what is happening and how you interpret it because I think

Maybe one place to start is that I don't think anyone's alleging that NTIA does not have the authority to do this. And we'll probably talk about the wisdom of doing this. But let me ask you to first start there maybe and then we can circle around to all the other things.

Sarah Morris (05:03)
Yeah, mean, so the statute is clear in that I think it's helpful to step back and think about what the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act did as it relates to BEAD So the premise of the BEAD program was to finally close the digital divide and

take all of the unserved and underserved locations that exist in the country and take the final step in closing them once and for all. This was coming on the heels of several other broadband grant programs such as the Capital Projects Fund wasn't exclusively a broadband grant program, but it was among them that was among those uses.

Christopher Mitchell (05:45)
Right, I was

actually just refreshing myself on this and you're well aware of the Connect America Fund and RDOF and I felt like Congress had totally changed and I'm sorry to jump in, it's just for me, this is like the most important thing because it drives me crazy, which is Congress was going to like give the money to the FCC as they were contemplating this and then they shifted it, right? And they shifted it to NTIA specifically because of past failures.

Sarah Morris (05:54)
No.

Yeah, and they did it in structuring it very ⁓ deliberately as a state grant program. So NTIA oversees the program, but states are ultimately the ones responsible for running a competitive bidding process. And the statute is very clear that states should run a fair and transparent competitive bidding process to allocate or to spend this money and to sub-grant it to the Internet service providers that apply for funds.

And the obligations of the states and for NTIA to oversee is to connect every unserved location, every underserved location, and then any money left over after a state has done that can be spent on other, what the statute calls non-deployment uses. And there's a wide range of ways you can interpret that and operationalize that in a grant program. Well, the statute...

Christopher Mitchell (06:52)
Right, we anticipated

workforce development for instance. So go ahead.

Sarah Morris (06:55)
Workforce

development, digital skills training, making sure that the people who are accessing the Internet can actually, these are late adapters, so making sure they have the tools to come online, augmenting capacity in various ways.

So to your original question, which was like, no one's really questioning whether whether NTIA has the authority to do this. You know, I think that's a question we can debate. I will say that this is an unusual, very unusual and concerning step in, in this sequence coming after all of the states have run at least one, some states have run multiple rounds of a competitive bidding process.

to sort of come in at the end and overlay a new set of expectations. You know, does it violate the law? I don't know. Is it in line with the instructions in the law that Congress laid out in a bipartisan way? I don't think so. And so, you know, I think it's worth having a longer conversation about.

Christopher Mitchell (07:37)
Mm-hmm.

Sure, so when you look at it, would you say that I'm being not charitable if I'm saying that like, I mean, I've been trying to simplify this for people that don't follow it and I don't wanna, I don't like oversimplifying, ⁓ but it does seem like the entire purpose of this is to move rural households from a fiber solution to a satellite solution. So let me just stop there before I layer this question up with BEAD, C and D.

Sarah Morris (08:14)
I, you know, it does, assuming what you said in your article is true and sort of like triangulating that with what, I have an imperfect set of information here. I'm not inside the building. This is, this does appear to be a cost reducing measure, a cost to build reducing measure. And whether or not.

I think that will tend to favor satellite technology, whether or not that is explicitly the NTIA's intent. don't, can't speak to that.

Christopher Mitchell (08:41)
How do you react to it? As someone who thought very deeply about how to put this program together, I'm sure you consider different approaches to it. Let me just ask that and then we'll come back to what Congress intended. But just from your perspective in terms of a program that is good for America, how do you react to these changes?

Sarah Morris (08:59)
I mean, states are designed to be in the driver's seat here. we spent a lot of time, when I was at NTIA thinking about how we let states be in the driver's seat while balancing the need for, as I said earlier, for ⁓ appropriate oversight, accountability, et cetera. And...

The competitive bidding process really is at the crux of the state responsibility here. And it's interesting. again, I don't, this is getting into speculation territory based on what you've reported and what's kind of reading between the lines of the fact sheet that's now assuming that's a legitimate as well. If this is a matter of sort of like relying on modeled data,

to check the work of the states.

it one feels like not exactly the right use of model data, right? Like you use predictive model data when you want to predict the future, when you don't have a clear data set in front of you. So if you wanted to think about how you're designing the program or even if you wanted to think about what the extremely high cost per location threshold should be going into, as an assumption, going into a competitive bidding process. But the irony for me is that

we have the best data available right now and that is the result of all of these competitive bidding processes. So, you know, when I think about like trusting the states and putting them in the driver's seat to best serve the needs on the ground in their community, I think of a competitive bidding process administered by the states and approved, you know, either officially or unofficially. I don't know exactly what the process looks like right now, but I think there was at least some meeting.

with NTIA to both prior to and after the competitive bidding process was run by the state. So it wasn't done like completely willy-nilly, but I would trust the results of those processes and I would trust industry to put forth their best and final offer in the context of the competitive bidding process up against what they expect to see from their competitors.

Christopher Mitchell (11:03)
Yeah, I know that you were dealing with the states, but I'm sure you've heard some of the feelings from some of the bidders, the companies that are looking for this. And I just kind of think like how infuriating must it be to have gone through the process over the years to get to a point where you're like, all right, well, finally, here it is. We're going to get our locations and then to find out, no, we have to go back again. And we've just lost these locations and we have to lower our prices over here and like, all right, we're going to figure it out. But at least then.

will be done with this whole long process and to be told, nope, you know, like once again, pulling the rug out from under you. does. mean, I feel like you're locating this. you know, like it seems like you're coming back to the focus on this is something where we're taking states out of the driver's seat. And to me, that's what it looks like. And it's infuriating because the whole point, and we mentioned this a couple of minutes ago of this program was that the states were going to be in the driver's seat and we weren't going to substitute.

the specialized knowledge of bureaucrats in DC for that to force solutions on people that they don't want. And from my perspective, it looks like that's the direction that we're going.

Sarah Morris (12:06)
Yeah, I mean, this notion of how the grant program was structured at a macro level was hotly debated in the lead up to the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. And like you said, this could have been a program that was run out of the FCC. It could have been a program that was run much more top down from NTIA, where NTIA did the sub-granting process a la BTOP. And they...

Congress was very specific in how they structured it. I think at the core of that structure is this notion that there is not a one size fits all answer to this and that an open, fair, and transparent competitive bidding process is the best way, run uniquely by each state, is the best way to achieve the overall goals of the program.

Christopher Mitchell (12:57)
Can I bug you about technology neutrality? Cause I don't remember exactly where we were with how NTIA was treating satellite when the switchover came to the Trump administration, but I'm guessing you do. And I'm a little bit mystified as to why the people who demand technology neutrality as like a mantra.

Sarah Morris (13:00)
Sure.

Christopher Mitchell (13:19)
are also cool with treating satellite totally differently in terms of how they get paid. They get much more, they get money upfront, right? And they have different goals effectively. can you just remind me a little bit about, ⁓ and also you can pass because like, you know, this might not have been something you looked into deeply, but it was just something that's on the top of my head is that it strikes me as odd. And I was trying to remember where that came from or when it came.

Sarah Morris (13:40)
the notion of technology neutrality or

Christopher Mitchell (13:42)
No,

no, I know where that came from, but how satellite is both like included because of technology neutrality, but then is treated differently for the purposes of how a bidder receives its funds. If you're bidding for fiber or you're bidding for coax or you're bidding for terrestrial fixed wireless, you have one set of like, of a program in which you receive your funds after you've deployed and done a bunch of stuff. Satellite gets half their money upfront. And that's to me, it seems like that's.

doesn't fit with technology neutrality. So I'm just curious if you can walk me through like whether I should be outraged about that or if I should save my outrage for other things.

Sarah Morris (14:18)
Well, Chris, you should be outraged about whatever you want to be outraged about. A couple of things. technology neutrality is not in the statute. In fact, the statute contemplates and it requires the definition of priority broadband project. it directs NTIA to determine

how to implement this requirement for a priority broadband project and to give states guidance on how that should be evaluated as part of their competitive bidding processes. NTIA, sure.

Christopher Mitchell (14:46)
You know, sorry, let's pause there for one second

because you spent a lot of your career thinking about network neutrality and priority lanes. So would you say prioritizing broadband, which Congress demanded is not the same as neutrality?

Sarah Morris (15:01)
Yeah, mean, so the idea here was, and the statute was also very clear about building future proof technology that would support things like 5G, enhanced services, that is all in the statute. And the prior administration spent a lot of time thinking about how to operationalize that in line with the statute. You're also getting at something else that I think is worth

noting, which is this is an infrastructure program. It's part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was designed at a large level to invest significant amounts of money in infrastructure for the country and to create jobs. it is your right to sort of unpack that an investment in something in a wired, a terrestrial

technology looks a lot different than well, than investing in a wired or combination wired and wireless technology. I would even put fixed wireless in that bucket versus something that is non-terrestrial, something that is more like a low Earth orbit type of service. But that just looks different from an infrastructure level because there's just less infrastructure.

that needs investing when it comes to satellite low-Earth orbit service. And you mentioned you had like lost track of what kind of happened at the administration to administration handoff. The previous administration had released guidance, I think in January of 2025, but prior to inauguration, outlining the ways in which satellite could be

both considered and funded within the relevant federal grant law for these types of programs. And it involved a considerable amount of thinking and analysis to get to that point. And it's neither here nor there now because that has been superseded by the guidance that came out that you already pointed to in June. But I do think it's fair to say that

investments in satellite service for the purposes of this program. It's not to say anything negative about satellite as a potential gap filler in extremely remote areas, which is how the previous administration and NTIA thought about this, that it's bad. mean, it is an extraordinarily useful service. when it comes to the fun, again, getting back to the fundamentals and the goals of the Internet, the

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, we're supposed to be investing in infrastructure and creating jobs. And I would argue that the money, any dollar we're spending on satellite is money that we're not investing in infrastructure for rural communities, in the creation of jobs in and for these rural communities.

Christopher Mitchell (17:50)
Right. think just as one example of that, data centers are certainly becoming more contentious. And I think we're all watching that to try and get a sense of like, what is the dynamic and are they harmful and in what ways can we mitigate that? But you can imagine that there are places, and I specifically heard of an example in Louisiana where because they were putting fiber in that town now was eligible to receive a data center. It looks like they're going to have a data center coming to town.

It doesn't work that way if that community has satellite. The data center is not going to be like, cool, we're going to get five Starlink terminals and we're going to put a hundred million dollars into a facility here and connect it that way. And so it's just one of the areas that is just, it's so frustrating for me, for people that I feel like they treat it like we're saying Starlink is invaluable and we're not, we're saying.

this is a program that had specific goals in mind. It was part of a larger picture. I've never made that point before, but you've made it very well. And simply put, the only direction I can imagine in terms of the impact on job growth for a community that, or rural area that has more Starlink is less job growth. Perhaps they may have a few people that choose to move there, but you can get Starlink anywhere. So it's not clear why that would be a differentiator. While...

you have local telecommunications companies that had been doing phone service there and now they are less competitive. And so they are more likely to close shop and you're more likely to lose jobs with this strategy, just from a narrow perspective. So I agree with that framing. I don't know if there's anything else you wanna add to it.

Sarah Morris (19:21)
I mean, you bring up another interesting point, Chris, which is the impact on households and the impact on communities. I like to think about this, the investment in infrastructure really is designed to benefit both, right? I like to think about this in the context of rural electrification because I think that this is a very similar moment of importance and risk for extremely rural communities. When we...

talked about rural electrification and when this country committed to connecting every household in this country, no matter how rural, to an electric line, that meant basically everyone. And in the modern context of investment in infrastructure for broadband and for high-speed Internet service to communities, I think about this as the equivalent of

leaving some houses behind with a generator rather than committing to actually build the electrical line to that. We would never in the context of rural electrification have acknowledged that or has agreed that an electric generator would provide the same level of service over time as an electric line. And though it's an important, a critically important tool that many rural households should have at their disposal.

But it's not the same as having a line to the house, having lines into the community and building that infrastructure for scalability year over year.

Christopher Mitchell (20:39)
I always like to make the point also that it wasn't charity, right? Like it was, if you lived in Oklahoma City and you had good Internet access, we didn't build out to connect the farms of Oklahoma because it was charity. We made the lives of people in Oklahoma City better because everyone in Oklahoma had an access, right? The farms became more productive. We all benefited from the ability to have more products to see farming become more efficient.

to allow children to read at night and become better educated hopefully, and to allow women to do something other than pumping water. We all benefited from unlocking more societal resources from connecting everyone. So I look back at electrification as well from that perspective of like, this is an investment in the future of America. This is not charity for three million households that happen to live in remote areas.

Sarah Morris (21:26)
I think that's a great way to think about the economic trade-offs both at the individual level and the community level.

Christopher Mitchell (21:31)
That's too bad. I was ready to argue if you were going to debate me. I'm just kidding. ⁓ I'm curious about is I want to get to the non deployment funds. But regarding deployment, is there anything else I realized that you know, I feel like there's times where your hair might be getting blowed back because I'm I'm moving a little quickly and I've interrupted you a number of times. So is there anything else on the deployment side that that we should touch on that you want to make sure we cover?

Sarah Morris (21:34)
Hahaha

No, you're fine.

Yeah, mean, I I think that the, would urge this NTIA to stay true. You we heard Ariel Roth, I've heard Brooke Donilon speak at Mountain Connect about the importance of staying true to the statute. And I really appreciate that of this leadership of this NTIA. And I believe them when they say that. And I just hope that in the context of like supporting states as we're rounding out the, what has been an arduous.

sub-granting process that they stay true to the statute and allow states to remain in the driver's seat with appropriate oversight, but not with mysterious non-public, non-transparent additional processes, even if they are sort of tailored state by state, that they support the states in driving this program to completion.

Christopher Mitchell (22:42)
There's one other thing that I wanted to touch on, which is a chance to get your reaction to a little bit of the fact sheet. The fact sheet, which I took as responding to the criticism of me and a couple others, perhaps, but I was among the first, I think, to raise up the new process that seemed to have been emerged but not documented. And the word swampy came out, which is the first time I've heard St. Paul, Minnesota, described as swampy.

we're a bit, we're a bit elevated over here. We're not so swampy. but, but suggested that, that they were, doing the due diligence that needed to be done and people who are criticizing their move, which will result in less investment in rural America and more people having higher price, lower quality connections. Those are the results that will inevitably come in my words from their actions right now. They seem to suggest that I was, you know, part of some sort of like group that was.

benefiting from insiders and that they were fixing a process that was just irresponsible with how you were allocating money for broadband in America.

Sarah Morris (23:43)
Yeah, I mean, the fact sheet is confusing.

Without sounding overly defensive, I think that the prior administration has taken a lot of criticism for going too slowly, for being too process heavy. And that seems at odds with the characterization in the fact sheet of just standing by the window and throwing money out and whatever broadband networks happen to land underneath. Fair enough.

Christopher Mitchell (24:07)
Mm-hmm.

think you'd be a helicopter money drop person. I don't think you'd do it through windows.

Sarah Morris (24:14)
So, I look, I again, I appreciate what NTIA is trying to do here. And I do hope that the future of this program is one that's marked by true accountability and that these are wise investments that we keep track of over time. And so, and I, like, I don't know if I don't know if they formally release the fact sheet or if someone got a hold of it, but

I recognize that they're moving fast and they're trying to stay true to the deadline that they set ⁓ and that that's hard. So I don't want to, know, it is what it is, but I do think that the criticism is a little funny.

Christopher Mitchell (24:44)
Mm-hmm.

I feel like I'm out on a limb.

I feel like I'm out on a limb with my outrage. feel like you should be, I'm gonna more outraged on your behalf. Like, but I guess you're used to this point. You develop that thicker skin from public service maybe. Like I just find it insulting to be told that their effort to force higher cost, lower quality Internet service on families is in the best interest of the country and that they're doing it for a noble purpose.

Sarah Morris (24:54)
Hahahaha

Christopher Mitchell (25:14)
They might be doing it for noble reasons in their minds, but they should go talk to the people who are being switched over because those people could be on Starlink today. They could have been on Starlink yesterday. They've heard from their friends and family as to what the performance is. There's 2 million people across rural America that have Starlink. And I think overwhelmingly there's a sense that it works pretty well. But the simple fact is that there are millions of people who have chosen not to use it, right? I mean, we've seen state programs already give out free terminals and

found that very few people wanted them. These are not morons. These are people who are making a value decision with their dollars as to what they think is best for their future. And the Trump administration is overruling them from DC and then claiming to be holier than everyone else for making that decision. And I'm furious about it, but like I'm just saying, like I really, appreciate your restraint.

Sarah Morris (26:05)
Look, Chris, I think that a very important point that you just said there is the need to go out and hear from communities impacted by these processes. that's built in both to the model of a state-driven approach. Because in the original NOFO, states were required to do extensive consultations with different members of the community. And the NOFO was designed to be clear that that was not supposed to be perfunctory.

And so again, like I just, sorry. Yes, so there's the statute and then there is the notice of funding opportunity, which is what NTIA puts out to guide how the process is going to work. That has since, as you noted, been amended ⁓ fairly substantially in the June 6th guidance that NTIA put out. But there was an original NOFA that was released in May of 2022.

Christopher Mitchell (26:31)
Right, the NOFO is the collection of rules that people had to follow, yeah.

Yeah, that was roughly 15 years ago, I think. All right. Let's talk about the non-deployment funds. So the states are coming in way under budget now. And I'll just note for all the criticism that I, among others, leveled at the Biden administration and continue at times to level, the states are coming in at or below budget to deliver amazingly high quality technology to most people. I did not think

Sarah Morris (26:54)
Feels like it sometimes.

Christopher Mitchell (27:17)
we would have that level of success. And it is clear from what we've seen of states that have released it that they did it. And then the rules changed and they did it again, resulting in less of a use of funds that were allocated for this purpose. NTIA said that they would issue more guidance in the future about what could be done with those leftover dollars that are not used for those connections, which I took to mean as goodbye. I mean, we have yet to be seen and I'm not the most charitable person here. So they might.

be coming out with a way that states can use this, but I'm expecting states to lose this money. And I'm curious if you feel like I'm overreacting.

Sarah Morris (27:51)
So again, stepping back just a little bit, think again, it's important to go back to the statute. And the task for states and for NTIA to administer at a federal level was to connect every unserved location in a state, every underserved location in a state, and then whatever was left over a state could use for ⁓ what is referred to in the statute as non-deployment usage.

Christopher Mitchell (27:54)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Morris (28:17)
uses. And there's, you know, some parameters in the statute that lay out how to think about that. And then NTIA, in the original Notice of Funding Opportunity, laid out, you know, how to essentially operationalize that statutory legal, the guidance in the law. But I think it's important to kind of think about why the law was structured that way and the incentives that it creates. So each state is given a slice of

the pie, the $42.5 billion BEAD fund. The way that that slice is calculated is probably the topic for another show, but it was a process that I was intimately involved in, which was a formula that relied on the FCC's broadband data maps and their representation of unserved location in a state.

divided by the number of total locations in a state and then with an additional calculation for extremely high cost areas. So there's like a lot of work that went into slicing and dicing the BEAD money. But the thing that's important to remember is that each state gets its allocation and then they have to figure out how they're going to spend it.

The formula for the allocations and the actual needs on the ground is not always perfectly aligned because different, I like to think of it as unserved locations are not all created equal. Some unserved locations are at the top of a mountain. Some are just really, really far apart in a flat area. Others are just unserved because of some quirk in build out strategy among the carriers in a particular state. And so different.

Christopher Mitchell (29:46)
Right. Some states are Colorado and some states are Delaware. Right.

Sarah Morris (29:49)
Yes, and some states are Nebraska. And

so each state is going to have a different puzzle to put together to figure out how they're going to connect all the unserved locations, all the underserved locations, and then what they're going to do with that extra money for non-deployment uses. I like to think of this as the original benefit of the bargain. If you're really efficient and lucked out on the allocation, on the number of the costs for each unserved location in your state, you might have extra money available.

to spend on non-deployment uses. And you were incentivized, no matter what, to spend that money as efficiently as possible because if you were able to connect all the locations in your state, then you had more money left over for non-deployment uses. Similarly, if you spent your money really wisely through other grant programs like the Capital Projects Fund at Treasury, then that might unlock more funds available for non-deployment uses. again, states were sort of tasked with this really challenging

And the benefit of solving the puzzle smartly was that you got extra money to spend on these things. This is all in the statute, right? The idea of non-deployment uses is baked into the statute.

Christopher Mitchell (30:53)
which for people who are like really a little bit lost, that's Congress, like Congress's language. And according to the constitution, they're the ones that matter here. They set the terms and everyone else has to follow it. It's not guidelines, right? It's not like the pirate code. It is the rules that one has to stick with it.

Sarah Morris (30:57)
Yes.

Yeah, and look, I know I'm getting into the weeds here, Chris, but I'm going to take it one step further and to say that not only is this in the statute, it's part of the law, all of this money has already been, we call it obligated to the states. So think of it this way, think of each state as having a bank account with the federal government and that allocation amount that varies for each state has already been put in their account. There are just conditions.

Christopher Mitchell (31:34)
Right,

and it's like a credit card for like teenagers where like they can withdraw it for certain reasons.

Sarah Morris (31:39)
think even more

of like a trust fund, like it's available and if you meet certain conditions, then you can start drawing down different portions of the fund. But this notion that it's like out in the world and that NDIA can just reclaim it isn't like based in how the law, both the law for BEAD the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it's not how it works and it's not how like grant law works. Generally, once something has been obligated, it requires congressional rescission to pull it back.

because there's an obligation of the federal government to the entity, in this case states and territories for the money. So I want to, I'm like, sorry to get in the weeds, but I think it's important to lay that out there because there's a lot of shorthand in the press and even in just in how we talk about this casually. And it's not casual. It's like it's the fundamentals of federal grant making. And I want to make sure that we're like thinking about this.

grounded in that reality.

Christopher Mitchell (32:35)
think that's, it's very helpful to have a specific, the specific sense of how things work. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on. Cause I know that not only did you have to go through it, but you actually remember it and can talk about it in a way that makes sense. So I don't want to take up your whole day here. So ⁓ is there anything else that you want to cover relating to BEAD I mean, on the non-deployment funds, feel like we got good, you know, you make a very good point as to like why there are non-deployment funds in that.

In theory, according to law, Congress or NTIA should not be able to just pull that back. It is possible that the president's administration is expecting another rescission package through Congress that might do that. And they're waiting for that. We'll see what happens. This is a whole new thing that I feel like, you know, if you follow the political podcasts people are following, rescission is a big discussion now. So like people will hear that word more and more.

Sarah Morris (33:21)
Yeah,

and like, look, I don't think that we should let states keep the money that's already been obligated to them because the law set, like because of some vagary of the law either. I think it's good policy. We are investing in all of this infrastructure to connect homes that up until this point have had either extremely slow and insufficient connectivity or no connectivity at all. And states, like there is value in supporting this investment with additional investments in these communities.

to make sure that one, that folks have the tools to use it once it's been built, but also that there are community level drivers for leveraging that connectivity. know, health care, connectivity for health care, whether it's telehealth or investing in community health centers to better equip them to serve the needs of their communities, investment in AI infrastructure, which you've already talked about, precision agriculture.

all of these things that for rural communities can really be transformative in taking the connectivity itself and enhancing the value by, you know, a number of order of magnitudes. And so there is, and Congress contemplated that, right? So I just think, I hope that the door on conversation around non-deployment uses is not closed, that there is an openness at the,

agency to continuing to think about a way, even if they're narrowing the scope of non-deployment uses to.

to continue to think about the real value that this money can bring to states.

Christopher Mitchell (34:53)
I wouldn't even up the ante on that, which is to say that we're talking about for the, BEAD program at this point, we're talking about in the order of like three to 4 million locations. I think there's probably one could argue there's a bunch of people leftover. So, but call it on the order of like 5 million families that might be touched by this, which is what, like 12 million people, 13 million people, something like that, potentially there's more than 30 million people who today have access to the Internet. They live in Baltimore and Comcast is available at their building, but they're not using the Internet.

You know, there's people who, who might be in areas where they, they have no devices, they can't afford the service. so the non-deployment funds, like I would say, you're even more important because there is actually a greater population that needs to benefit from additional digital skills, devices, and affordability programs. And that number of people is significantly more than the number of people in rural areas that don't have access to, to infrastructure. So,

It's one of those things, I feel like those people are constantly left out except for those of us in the public interest. I feel like I'm a broken record on this to be like, what about these people? Like we spent a hundred billion dollars more than that on rural locations and we spent almost nothing on the person in Baltimore that has never had a real chance to use the Internet.

Sarah Morris (36:06)
Yeah, I mean, if the goal of this program is to close the digital divide once and for all, yeah, I think like we, this money has been explicitly directed on a bipartisan basis to solving that problem. And it'd be disappointing to not solve the problem using that money. was at workforces and other, we have to build these networks. And so like making sure that we have...

Christopher Mitchell (36:29)
Not if they're in space.

Sarah Morris (36:31)
But making sure that communities are equipped with the people

Christopher Mitchell (36:32)
Sorry.

Sarah Morris (36:34)
and the trainings and support to guide those workforces, I think, is another major opportunity for non-deployment. But yes, supposed to be the cleanup batter after a long and storied history of investments in broadband access and adoption, up to and including the current federal investments ⁓ under various laws.

But to do that, to fully realize the magnitude of this investment, which we're never going to get again, we need to do it right.

Christopher Mitchell (37:03)
Yes. And that's, guess we can, we can wrap in a second, but this is the part that I find like the most frustrating is just that for all the problems I had with BEAD, I was like, well, at least we're moving in the right direction in terms of moving power to the States and decision-making by people who will be held accountable for it. And the Trump administration seems to be focused on pulling power back to make the same mistakes that we made with billions of dollars before that ended up being deployed without actually changing.

the level of service available to the people that we're supposed to benefit. So I just, it's so frustrating, but that's the reality we're looking at right now.

Sarah Morris (37:38)
will say, I think that RDOF and for those of you who aren't familiar, it's a former...

Christopher Mitchell (37:45)
the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund from the FCC that, funny enough, you didn't know this, but next week will be the focus of, we'll be talking with John Chambers about some of the, what we're thinking about RDOF now five years later after the auctions and everything.

Sarah Morris (37:56)
Yeah, and

I mean, think like suffice it to say that the general takeaway is that RDOF was not successful, that it was overall a failure and that it was not a wise use of government funds. And it was spent too quickly with too little oversight. And I would just caution this, leadership at NTIA to really think about the lessons learned from RDOF and to make sure that they're structuring

you know, this new, the new guidance, the results of this new guidance in a way that protects the integrity of the BEAD program, because that is something I care tremendously about.

Christopher Mitchell (38:32)
Sarah, I want to thank you for your time today. you fit me into a tight schedule, so I do appreciate it.

Sarah Morris (38:37)
Thank you so much, Chris, for having me.

Christopher Mitchell (38:40)
And we're back. Ha ha, we fooled you. That wasn't really the end of the show. We had one more point. So Sarah, I was hoping you'd give us a sense of what's happening to try to advocate for some of the interests we brought forward on the show.

Sarah Morris (38:52)
Yeah, look, Chris, there's a lot of people working on the general issues of promoting broadband access and adoption. A lot of people laser focused on the BEAD program and where it's going next. I count myself among them, along with other folks in this space. so if this is, if what I'm saying is sparking something with you, reach out and we'd love to get you.

plugged into the broader set of efforts that are happening across the space to ensure that this program stays on track and meets its statutory goals.

Christopher Mitchell (39:24)
Awesome. Thank you.