For the past three decades, U.S. advanced telecommunications policy has been bandwidth focused: defining and delivering “broadband” speed – and not modernizing the nation’s legacy metallic telephone and cable TV delivery infrastructure to fiber. That policy focus is likely to gain greater emphasis with a new federal government taking office in 2025.
Blair Levin, a widely quoted analyst and former U.S. Federal Communications Commission official, told Fierce Network that “the biggest question is whether the new administration will take the view that satellite broadband is equal or better than terrestrial alternatives.”
More than likely it will given president-elect Donald Trump’s indicated approval for LEO satellite internet service over subsidizing fiber to the premises (FTTP) landline infrastructure preferred by the Biden administration’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program.
In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan less than two weeks before his election, Trump impliedly suggested Congress could end subsidies for FTTP, pointing to Elon Musk’s Starlink LEO satellite Internet service. “We're spending a trillion dollars to get cables all over the country, right up to upstate areas where you have like two farms,” Trump told Rogan. “And they're spending millions of dollars [via BEAD]…Elon can do it for nothing.”
Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) President Gary Bolton holds out hope modernizing twisted pair copper and coax cable delivery infrastructure to fiber will nevertheless remain on the table in the incoming government. "We’re optimistic the new Congress and administration will provide opportunities to build out more robust rural fiber connectivity," Bolton said in a statement to Fierce Network.
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