BY MARK LISHERON
BADGER INSTITUTE
Government overregulation is imperiling the start of a $1 billion plan to expand broadband service to the hardest-to-reach places in Wisconsin.
The problem is nationwide, with telecom companies balking at bidding for a piece of a $42 billion federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, a tiny part of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed by Congress in November 2021.
Nearly three years after passage of the bill, not a single household or business in the U.S. has been connected by a foot of broadband fiber. Program directors are conceding that work is unlikely to start anywhere before well into next year. At a luncheon this summer, Wisconsin Public Service Commission chair Summer Strand was less than confident the project could be completed by 2030.
“It doesn’t mean the money is going to flow in 2025 and everyone’s going to be online in 2026,” Strand said at the time. “My conservative estimate would be that we would be close to serving every underserved and unserved location in the state by 2030.”
There is good reason to believe the broadband plan cannot be completed at all, at least with the $1 billion from the BEAD program. The PSC’s own estimate to provide complete broadband access has been growing for years and stands at $1.8 billion. A recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates the cost at $2.2 billion.
Gov. Tony Evers and his Task Force on Broadband Access are asking for state taxpayer funding in the 2025-27 budget to complete the job, although neither has said how much is needed. As the Badger Institute reported in June 2023, Republicans in the state Assembly yanked $750 million for broadband expansion from Evers’ budget, questioning how the state had handled previous federal broadband grants.
