Biden’s Broadband Bust
Connecting the Swamp: How Arielle Roth Exposed DC’s BEAD Fraud
By James Erwin It is rare to see great shoe-leather investigative reporting these days. It is all the rarer for that reporting to come from a government official who should the one the press is holding accountable. In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal this week, NTIA…
BEAD funds should not subsidize ISPs forever
By James Erwin A bipartisan group of 14 senators is lobbying NTIA to let states keep the $20 billion in BEAD savings Administrator Arielle Roth has been able to find in the program. As we have argued before, this money should return to the taxpayer, and it certainly should not…
From CHIPS to BEAD, Biden’s politics infected federal spending
By James Erwin President Biden’s team were eager to popularize “Bidenomics” when they saw marginal improvements in inflation, but it is more likely the term will become a by-word for politicized slush funds. There will be manifold retrospectives on the Biden Administration in due course. Most of these will focus…
The Problem(s) with Poles
By James Erwin If you want to make any telecom expert’s fingers curl, mention pole attachments. It is an incredibly niche policy area, but exorbitant pole attachment fees and burdensome terms from municipally-owned poles could undermine federal broadband deployment efforts, possibly wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. If Congress and the…