How the Push for Deployment is Erasing the Path to Adoption

Broadband is more than a utility; it’s a prerequisite for economic mobility.

Without reliable internet, people in rural and underserved communities have increasingly limited options for education, employment, healthcare, and civic life.

Connectivity on its own is just a start. Adoption is the true driver of income gains, employment access, and entrepreneurial success. Research from the Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC) highlights the critical distinction between broadband availability and adoption:

“While availability remains important (and is a prerequisite to adoption)...findings make clear that the adoption measures were better indicators [of economic mobility] when compared to those assessing simple availability.”
-- (SRDC)

Recognizing these stakes, the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act dedicated over $42 billion to the BEAD program. Early guidance prioritized equity, affordability, workforce, and community engagement, all centered around fiber deployment. But in mid-2025, the BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice (RPN) introduced a major shift: rules were rewritten to emphasize “technology neutrality” and the “Benefit of the Bargain” (BoB) framework, as well as a reinterpretation of the requirements for labor, adoption, and local partnerships.

This analysis examines how Initial Volume II proposals (submitted under the original BEAD guidance) changed in their Final Versions following the revised federal framework.

Our goal was to go beyond anecdotal impressions and instead develop a systematic way of identifying key trends and consequences.

Although not every state has submitted a final proposal yet, our approach enabled us to measure shifts in topics like technology, performance, workforce, and partnerships across 45 states and territories via the following techniques:

1. Preprocessing & Embedding
Using natural language processing, full PDF text of each BEAD proposal was segmented into chunks, cleaned, and embedded using a localized language model to create numerical vector representations. These embeddings allowed for semantic comparisons between proposals, even when phrasing or structure differed.

From Fiber-First to Tech-Neutral

Initial proposals predictably favored fiber, long considered the preferred choice given its high capacity, durability, and low latency. However, as just recently as highlighted in the Fiber Broadband Association’s Q3 2025 newsletter, revised BEAD guidance has pushed states toward more technology-neutral approaches and lowest-cost deployment methods.

Yet even those shifts in guidance don’t explain why “satellite”, as a topic, witnessed such an extraordinary explosion in references.

The reason for this increase wasn’t uniform either:

In New Hampshire and Connecticut, satellite’s disproportionate jump between the initial and final proposals wasn’t due to any planned expansion of satellite service. Rather it was due to a flood of bids from satellite ISPs, most of which were ultimately rejected.
Meanwhile, states like Ohio and South Dakota not only referenced satellite more frequently but also began allocating significant funding toward satellite deployments in hard-to-reach areas.

Patterns Beneath the Surface

Party affiliation was not a strong predictor of the direction of changes, but it did shape their magnitude. States led by Democratic governors tended to revise their proposals more extensively as illustrated by the wider, flatter curve of their distribution of changes. Republicans, on the other hand, showed more thematic consistency as personified by their significantly narrower curve, signifying a greater reluctance to revise language between initial and final proposals.

Distribution of Changes by Party

In terms of technology, only one notable difference emerged: Republicans referenced satellite technology and infrastructure more than twice as often as Democrats.

In all other areas, shifts were consistent across parties and regions, with the largest increase coming in technical language, specifically: performance benchmarks, technology specifications, and deployment timelines.

Although this technology shift is understandable as a natural result of the new rules, this ramp up did not occur in a vacuum, it came at a price.

Rural Communities at Risk

References to rural America declined in over half of states. The sharp decline in these references wasn't partisan, it was systemic. Even as BEAD’s mission targeted the unserved, states generalized their language, diluting rural specificity.

Partnerships Faltering

Initial drafts emphasized partnerships with local governments, electric co-ops, and nonprofits. These were practical, grounded, and community-rooted. But they too were deprioritized.

The decline suggests a drift toward top-down implementation. In bypassing local collaborators, states may reduce short-term friction but at the risk of losing long-term trust and buy-in.

Adoption and Workforce Cutbacks

No topics saw a more dramatic decline in reference than “adoption” and “workforce.” These themes, essential to ensuring infrastructure is used and benefits remain local, were consistently slashed.

Initial proposals emphasized digital literacy, affordability, and job training. Final versions stripped much of this language away. As the Southern Rural Development Center emphasizes, the presence of infrastructure doesn’t matter if people can’t afford, access, or use it.

A broadband network with no users is not a success. It’s a missed opportunity and a squandered investment.

"One of the lies that we are telling ourselves is that the digital divide will be solved when everybody is connected, and that's just not true."
--Dr. Chrisopher Ali, Penn State University

Broadband Mavericks

Despite the dominant shift toward technical efficiency and centralized strategies, a handful of states bucked the trend, offering proof that bold, community-oriented planning is still possible within the BEAD framework.

Prioritizing Partnerships: Indiana, Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi

While most states slashed partnership language, a handful held steady. Indiana even posted a slight increase in partnership emphasis (+4%), a rare bright spot in a category dominated by declines of 40–70%. Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi also stayed close to neutral, suggesting they resisted the sharp pivot away from local governments, co-ops, and nonprofits.

Holding the Rural Line: Virginia and Maine

Amid a nationwide collapse in rural references, Virginia and Maine did not waiver from their original commitment to these communities. Virginia increased its rural mentions by +50%, while Maine sustained its focus on rural communities, both representing a stark contrast given the 80–100% drops elsewhere.

The Lone Standout: Louisiana

Louisiana stood out as the clearest outlier. It increased rural references by an extraordinary 660%, while also strengthening commitments to partnerships (+32%), adoption (+93%), and workforce development (+59%). Rather than following the national drift away from these priorities, Louisiana moved in the opposite direction. The Pelican State proves that BEAD’s original vision—universal broadband access paired with robust local investment in adoption—remains within reach when the emphasis stays on people and not just performance.

Local Solutions Must Shape What Comes Next

In the face of shifting priorities at the federal and state levels, local solutions matter more than ever. When local leaders bring together on-the-ground partners to define priorities and generate solutions, communities win.

Research from the Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) drives home this idea with a striking example: in Beltrami County, MN, collaboration between local telecom providers and community nonprofits led to a 12% increase in small business growth, alongside a 7 % rise in per capita income between 2020 and 2022.

Kaptivate’s work through the Connecting Minority Communities (CMC) Pilot Program offers further substantiation. Anchor institutions like HBCUs used CMC funding not only to expand broadband access, but also to launch training programs, affordability initiatives, and workforce development efforts. These investments sparked new economic opportunities and improved health outcomes that reached far beyond campus boundaries

Importantly, these placed-based outcomes didn’t happen by focusing solely on speed or infrastructure. These results happened by centering on people.

Don’t Let the Opportunity Slip Away

BEAD’s movement from equity-first to performance-centered is no secret. But what’s lost in that realignment is more than just language. By de-emphasizing rural perspectives, adoption efforts, and local partnerships, BEAD’s long-term impact may be at risk.

Adoption, workforce, and community engagement aren’t “extras.” They are broadband’s connective tissue. The opportunity is still here, but it will be up to state officials to fight for it and to local leaders to shape how their communities will ensure broadband infrastructure is valued, usable, and transformative.