BEAD and Buy America

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued a clarification of its intentions for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Buy America rules, stating that it still plans to take a strict approach to enforcing Buy America. In practical terms, that means that NTIA intends to only seek minor waivers from the Buy America rules. The NTIA is proposing that 90% of the materials used to construct BEAD projects—especially manufactured products like fiber-optic communications technologies that are strategically important to American network data—are made domestically. However, the NTIA recognizes that some of the chips needed might not be manufactured here in time to support BEAD grant implementation so there may be a limited waiver for them. The good news is manufacturing plants for fiber equipment are being built in the US by companies like Nokia, Adtran, Corning, CommScope, Prysmian, and Superior Essex. Overall, the Build America requirements don’t appear to be the big bottleneck that was feared in 2020 or 2021, but it remains to be seen if the new domestic manufacturing will be able to keep up with the demand from BEAD.