Wisconsin’s The Badger Project looks at BEAD funding and the relatively new focus on satellite…

Experts worry that the federal government will force states to use public funds initially earmarked for fiber-optic instead for much slower but cheaper-and-faster-to-install satellite internet provided by companies like SpaceX’s Starlink and Jeff Bezos’ Project Kuiper.

They spoke with Minnesota-based Christopher Mitchell…

The bill intended for most of the funding to go towards locally-owned fiber-optic networks, Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative, a Minnesota-based think tank supporting communities’ telecommunications efforts, said in an email to The Badger Project.

“There was an expectation that only the very remote, intolerably high-cost locations would be left with satellite access,” he continued.

While fiber-optic delivers superfast and virtually uninterrupted internet access, there’s a significant, one-time cost of time and money to bury the cables in the ground, especially in rural areas with few homes. For-profit companies have often refused to make that investment without public funding, because the return is poor in sparsely populated areas.

On the other hand, satellite internet has lower setup costs in both time and money, as only a dish needs to be installed at each home or business. But as technology advances and consumers keep requiring faster internet, the speeds provided by satellite are much slower in general than fiber. Despite improvements, Starlink, the industry leader, does not regularly reach the federal definition of broadband speeds, according to an analysis by Ookla, an organization that provides measurements of telecommunications. Internet delivered via fiber-optic cables can already obliterate that minimum speed.

Starlink also says its internet service can be affected by severe weather. And questions remain if satellite internet companies can deliver on the scale needed across the country.

Recent changes in BEAD requirements has meant more satellite (in the applications) in Wisconsin…

Wisconsin’s original proposal for homes without high-speed internet access had 93% fiber-optic deployment. The revised plan submitted has 73% fiber, 13% fixed wireless, often from towers, and 13% satellite.