Several Senate Republicans and Democrats told us in interviews last week their stances on federal AI policy haven’t changed since the chamber voted 99-1 to block a proposed AI moratorium (see 2511200051).
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez and top Democrats on the House and Senate Communications subcommittees raised concerns Wednesday night and Thursday about a draft executive order that would direct NTIA to potentially curtail non-deployment BEAD funding for states that the Trump administration determines have AI laws that are overly burdensome (see 2511190069). Gomez questioned the legality of a provision in the draft order directing the FCC to consider adopting a national standard for AI models that preempts state laws.
ORLANDO -- BEAD-related fiber deployments will face sizable data center competition for fiber-optic cabling, and the BEAD camp is likely to lose out, supply chain experts predicted this week at the Broadband Nation Expo.
Discussion about a draft executive order seeking to block states from regulating AI is “speculation” until something is announced, a White House official said in a statement Thursday (see 2511190059). However, the California Privacy Protection Agency (CalPrivacy) and others condemned the possible preemption attempt.
Final BEAD proposals from 18 states and territories have been approved, NTIA said Tuesday. They are Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, Wyoming, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. One of those, Louisiana, has signed the National Institute of Standards and Technology award amendment, letting the state start accessing BEAD funds, NTIA added.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the agency could look at driving “inefficiencies” out of the USF program and NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth clarified the agency’s focus for the BEAD program in separate Q&As onstage Tuesday at NTCA’s Telecom Executive Policy Summit. NTIA rules restricting the broadband funding that BEAD participants can receive are aimed at preventing bids that rely on “speculative, hypothetical funding” to complete their obligations and at avoiding defaults, Roth said. NTIA said Tuesday that it approved 18 state BEAD proposals (see 2511180007).
The House Communications Subcommittee on Tuesday advanced a new version of the American Broadband Deployment Act (HR-2289) that combined language from 22 GOP-led connectivity permitting bills originally slated for the markup session (see 2511170048). However, the subpanel’s party-line 16-12 vote on the package reflected Democrats’ ongoing opposition. The House Commerce Committee during the last Congress similarly divided along party lines on a previous version of the broadband package, which never reached the floor amid strong Democratic resistance (see 2305230067).
A draft White House executive order that was circulating Wednesday night would resurrect a scuttled legislative bid to preempt nonfederal AI laws by making states ineligible for some allocated funding from the $42.5 billion BEAD program if they passed their own AI measures. The draft EO would require NTIA to issue a policy notice within 90 days “specifying the conditions under which States may be eligible for remaining [BEAD funding] that was saved through my Administration’s ‘Benefit of the Bargain’ reforms,” more commonly known as non-deployment funds estimated to total $20 billion.
The House Communications Subcommittee plans a markup session Tuesday on a set of 28 largely GOP-led broadband permitting bills, the Commerce Committee said Friday night. House Communications members traded partisan barbs during a September hearing on the measures, with Democrats saying that most of them were unlikely to be effective in speeding up connectivity buildout (see 2509180069). Tuesday's meeting will begin at 10:15 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn.
ORLANDO -- This year has already seen multiple blockbuster mergers and acquisitions in telecom, and the relatively modest levels of BEAD-related consolidation should start to heat up in 2026, said Jonathan Adelstein, TWN Communications' chief strategy and external affairs officer, at the annual Broadband Nation Expo on Monday. Pointing to such activity as Verizon/Frontier, AT&T/Lumen and regional deals, the former Wireless Infrastructure Association CEO said mobile network operators are interested in fiber. The state of BEAD had been unclear going into 2025, but now the rules seem set, and BEAD activity is picking up, he added.