LINCOLN — County officials and advocates for rural development cried foul over recent changes in a federal initiative to expand access to high-speed internet, saying they will force thousands in rural Nebraska to settle for second-rate broadband.

Take Seward County, just outside of Lincoln, for example.

County Commissioner Misty Ahmic of Milford was part of a county task force dedicated to bringing high-speed internet to so-called “dark territories” in the county. It spent four years holding town hall meetings, polling local residents about their internet service and challenging inaccuracies in a federal map showing where the internet is supposedly high speed.

That work identified 1,724 locations in Seward County that would be eligible for federal grants to help companies bring broadband service to areas deemed too expensive to serve, without government help.

Changing Programs

But much of that work, in one advocate’s words, went “poof” after the task force was informed about new changes in the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Act to cut costs. Now, only 629 locations in Seward County are eligible for a portion of the $405 million in grants available in Nebraska.

Statewide, the changes have disqualified more than half of the nearly 30,000 locations identified initially as eligible BEAD grants because they were locations unserved or underserved by high-speed internet.

In addition, the priority was changed – instead of prioritizing more reliable, easily upgraded fiber optic service, BEAD now gives more deference to cheaper-to-build alternatives, including satellite service like Elon Musk’s Starlink or fixed wireless.

The sudden change, as the BEAD grants were about to be awarded, has county and state officials scrambling to understand what’s left and if there’s a chance to make more areas — once deemed eligible — eligible again.

More than half of the state’s 93 county boards have signed onto letters to federal officials objecting to the changes.

“It’s very frustrating. We have all these holes in our county, and BEAD was going to bring service to those areas,” Ahmic said.

Fears Of Two-Tiered System

Oliver Borchers-Williams of the Lincoln-based Southeast Nebraska Development District said the changes promise to set up a “two-tiered system,” where state-of-the-art fiber is easily available in urban areas, but in some rural areas, only less-reliable wireless and satellite service is available.

“It’s technology that wouldn’t cut it in a city, but we’re saying it’s good enough for rural areas,” said Borchers-Williams, who saw hundreds of locations in his 16-county area deemed ineligible.

BEAD was adopted during the Biden Administration, which touted the $42.5 billion program as “internet for all” and the final solution to bring affordable, high-speed internet services to even the most remote and hard-to-serve areas of the country.

At the time, Biden said broadband service was as important as bringing electricity to every home decades ago. Having high-speed internet is essential in running a business, as well as for advanced “precision agriculture” increasingly used by farmers and to provide a reliable link with medical providers via tele-health. Ask a gamer if they’d rather have fiber.

Funding Set Aside

Nebraska was allocated $405 million to expand broadband, but officials now say that probably only about half of that outlay will be spent under the new rules.

“There’s a lot of frustration out here,” said State Sen. Tom Brandt of Plymouth, who saw hundreds of previously eligible locations deemed ineligible for upgrades due to the recent changes.

There have been several federal and state initiatives to help fund the expansion of broadband into areas companies deem too expensive and too sparsely settled to serve. But one state effort, the $20 million-a-year Broadband Bridge program, was eliminated by Gov. Jim Pillen due to state budget problems.

Earlier this month, state and local officials learned of the extent of the changes ordered in June by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), eliminating thousands of locations in Nebraska.

The NTIA billed the changes as cutting billions of dollars in spending, reducing paperwork, eliminating labor requirements and overall “ending Biden’s broadband burdens.”

Officials here said that the changes did eliminate some unnecessary red tape but that they were mostly aimed at cutting spending, a top priority of the Trump Administration. It also opened the way for less-reliable “unlicensed fixed wireless” service to be counted as “serving” an area with broadband and opened the way for those providers to bid for grants. The bottom line, they said, is less reliable, slower internet.

“Cost is the only thing that matters now,” said Borchers-Williams.

Said Ahmic, “Now it’s let’s get it done as cheaply as possible and as quickly as possible.”

Costs Vs. Investments

To be sure, stringing a mile of fiber optic cable can cost between $5,000 to $20,000, according to industry estimates, which is much more expensive than sending an internet signal from a tower or satellite. Stringing fiber to some remote customers could cost up to $45,000, and the initial state plans called for some sites to be served by technologies other than fiber due to the high cost.

But, advocates say, fiber internet is much more reliable (especially in bad weather), provides higher speeds and can be “scaled” even higher as technology improves. Unlicensed fixed wireless service, they say, can be slowed during certain times of the day, or slowed because someone has used up most of their data.

“If you’re a gamer, you’d rather use fiber than a low-orbit satellite,” said Tip O’Neill, president of the Nebraska Telecommunications Association.

Federal and state officials say they’re working with the NTIA to learn what, if any, latitude Nebraska now has in deploying BEAD funds.

“We are currently gathering and analyzing data to evaluate all the options afforded to us through the new BEAD guidance,” said Patrick Haggerty, the state’s broadband office chief, in an email response to questions.

He added that “deploying a diverse set of technologies has always been essential” in reaching broadband to all Nebraskans.

Officials Weigh In

A spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), via email, said that the senator recognizes how essential high-quality internet service is to Nebraska and especially rural areas. She said the senator is working with the NTIA “to ensure Nebraska retains as much decision-making authority as possible in the agency’s evaluation of our subgrantee selection.”

Candace Meredith, deputy director with the Nebraska Association of County Officials, said her organization is reaching out to federal officials in hopes that fiber can be deployed to more locations.

“This is a huge economic driver for our rural communities,” Meredith said, adding that months of work local officials did to identify eligible  went “poof.”

Borchers-Williams added that the changes will reduce jobs in the state, citing the recent layoff of 70 workers in the state by Lincoln-based ALLO, a fiber-optic internet provider.

O’Neill, who represents fiber optic internet providers, said you can “never say never” about changes in regulations and programs.

But Ahmic and Borchers-Williams are less optimistic. BEAD, they said, was viewed as the final solution to connect rural areas to good internet. But the recent changes mean that isn’t going to happen.

“I think we’re still going to have to wrestle with inadequate connectivity in rural Nebraska,” Borchers-Williams said. “This isn’t going to fix it.”

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/07/21/changes-in-federal-broadband-pro...