In 2021, President Joe Biden placed Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of leading the administration’s efforts to expand rural broadband access across the United States. The aim was to connect millions of American households to high-speed internet using $42.5 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the infrastructure bill. However, it has been reported that despite this significant funding and Harris’s role in spearheading the initiative, no American has been connected to high-speed internet through the program.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr pointed out the failure of the Biden-Harris administration to make any progress on rural broadband expansion. In June, Carr noted that neither President Biden nor Vice President Harris had managed to connect a single American with high-speed internet despite having access to $42.5 billion in funding from the infrastructure bill. He also highlighted concerns raised by hundreds of broadband infrastructure builders who claim that the $42 billion plan to expand internet access has been designed to fail.
Carr’s criticism is specifically directed at the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which was established by the IIJA and allocated $42.45 billion to support broadband infrastructure and adoption. However, the BEAD program appears to have had little success since the bill was passed in 2021.
Commissioner Carr contends that much of the administration’s failure to expand broadband can be attributed to its focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals. He argues that by prioritizing these objectives over sound policy decisions, the Biden administration is jeopardizing the success of rural broadband expansion efforts. Carr emphasizes that rate regulation, union preferences, technology choices, DEI goals, and government-run network support all threaten to leave rural communities behind in the race to connect households to high-speed internet services.