Exit email Trump plan to fund Musks Starlink over fiber called betrayal of rural US Director of $42 billion broadband fund pushed out, says program is being ruined. Jon Brodkin Mar 17, 2025 2:19 pm | 87 Credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino Credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreA federal broadband official departed the US government with a warning that a Trump administration plan will strand rural Americans with worse Internet access in order to help Elon Musk secure public money for Starlink."Stranding all or part of rural America with worse Internet so that we can make the world's richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington," wrote Evan Feinman, who had been a Commerce Department official and director of the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program since 2022.As Politico reported, Feinman made the statement in "a blistering email to his former colleagues on his way out the door Sunday warning that the Trump administration is poised to unduly enrich Elon Musk's satellite Internet company with money for rural broadband."Feinman left the department on Friday. His departure came less than two weeks after Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick announced that BEAD was reversing the Biden administration's decision to prioritize fiber Internet networks when distributing grants from the $42.45 billion fund.ProPublica's Craig Silverman reported that "Feinman's term ended and he was not reappointed." Silverman also posted the full email sent by Feinman to colleagues.Warning of deeply negative outcomesFeinman wrote that he is "disappointed not to be able to see this project through" and that "the new administration seems to want to make changes that ignore the clear direction laid out by Congress, reduce the number of American homes and businesses that get fiber connections, and increase the number that get satellite connections."The degree of the shift away from fiber "remains unknown, but regardless of size, it will be a disservice to rural and small-town America," he wrote. Feinman said some versions of the proposal are "benign," but he warned of "significant risk that the changes being proposed will be ill-considered and create deeply negative outcomes."Feinman urged people to contact their representatives in Congress and the Trump administration and urge them to avoid "the worst version" of the planned changes. "They should fix BEAD by removing the requirements that have nothing to do with building infrastructure, NOT change it to benefit technology that delivers slower speeds at higher costs to the household paying the bill... There is still time to help the administration make the right call here. Reach out to your congressional delegation and reach out to the Trump Administration and tell them to strip out the needless requirements, but not to strip away from states the flexibility to get the best connections for their people," he wrote.The 2021 law that created the BEAD program said the government must prioritize technology that "can easily scale speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses; and support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services."During the Biden administration, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) decided that fiber architecture is the only technology that achieves the BEAD law's goal of building future-proof networks. Fiber brings high-speed broadband to homes and businesses and is essential for providing backhaul to support advanced wireless services, the Biden NTIA said.Feinman's email said that "even though the law pretty clearly requires that fiber builds be the program's 'priority projects,' the administration wants to increase the usage of low-earth satellites and diminish the usage of fiber." Additionally, fixed wireless providers that use earth-based networks instead of satellites will effectively be "shut out of the BEAD program," he wrote.Some states are on the 1-yard lineRepublicans criticized the Biden administration for not yet distributing grant money, but the NTIA said in November that it had approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory. Feinman said the change in direction will delay grant distribution."Some states are on the 1-yard line. A bunch are on the 5-yard line. More will be getting there every week," he wrote. "These more-sweeping changes will only cause delays. The administration could fix the problems with the program via waiver and avoid slowdowns."The program is on pause, even if the new government leaders don't admit it, according to Feinman. "The administration wants to make changes, but doesn't want to be seen slowing things down. They can't have both. States will have to be advised that they should either slow down or stop doing subgrantee selection," he wrote.Delaware, Louisiana, and Nevada had their final proposals approved by the NTIA in January, a few days before Trump's inauguration. "Shovels could already be in the ground in three states, and they could be in the ground in half the country by the summer without the proposed changes to project selection," Feinman wrote.The three states with approved final proposals are now "in limbo," he wrote. "This makes no sensethese states are ready to go, and they got the job done on time, on budget, and have plans that achieve universal coverage," his email said. "If the administration cares about getting shovels in the ground, states with approved Final Proposals should move forward, ASAP."Other states that were nearing the final stage are also in limbo, Feinman wrote. "No decision has been made about how much of the existing progress the 30 states who are already performing subgrantee selection should be allowed to keep," he wrote. "The administration simply cannot say whether the time, taxpayer funds, and private capital that were spent on those processes will be wasted and how much states will have to re-do."Size of spending limit could be crucialFeinman said some changes being floated aren't that big a deal. This includes scrapping requirements that Republicans have described as "woke" priorities."This will include all provisions related to labor and wage, climate resiliency, middle-class affordability, etc. I do not regard the inclusion or removal of these provisions as significant; they were inserted by the prior administration for messaging/political purposes, and were never central to the mission of the program, nor were they significant in the actual conduct of the program," Feinman wrote.Feinman also expects a new per-location spending limit. "This could be fine," he wrote. "There weren't any cases of a state planning to spend hundreds of thousands to connect one location anyway. However, if it's heavy-handed or imposed in a manner that ignores the needs of rural communities, it could be very bad."Feinman said the specific amount of the spending limit would be important because giving grants to Musk's Starlink or Amazon's Kuiper satellite service would cost much less than funding fiber projects. "More people will get Starlink/Kuiper, and fewer people will get fiber connection," he wrote. "This could be dramatic, or it could be measured, depending on where the admin sets the threshold limit, and whether states are permitted to award projects above the new threshold on the basis of value dollar, or if they're forced to take the cheapest proposal, even if it provides poorer service."We contacted the Commerce Department about Feinman's departure and email, and will update this article if we get a response.Jon BrodkinSenior IT ReporterJon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 87 Comments