Who wins and who loses in the Senate infrastructure bill

Telecommunications giants are among the winners of the infrastructure bill, according to Protocol. The package includes $65 billion to expand broadband connectivity and does away with some parts of President Biden's initial proposal that were the least popular with the telecommunications industry, including more aggressive requirements regarding network speed and provisions that would have targeted grant funding to municipal networks. Blair Levin, former executive director of the National Broadband Plan and current policy adviser to New Street Research, said this is good news for all the telecommunications giants but especially Comcast, as "they invested 10 years ago in trying to accomplish the same goal, which is trying to get the currently unconnected people online" through their low-cost Internet Essentials program.

Municipal networks, on the other hand, are on the losing side of the deal after being dropped from the bill. "To me, it looks like the goals of changing the market have been deferred in the effort of developing a bipartisan compromise," said Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. "The focus is putting money into areas that have nothing, as opposed to trying to be more aggressive and fix the market for everyone." Still, the bill also doesn't write municipal networks out completely. It says states cannot exclude co-ops, nonprofits, local governments and others when it's considering which providers to give funding to. That, Levin pointed out, goes against laws in states across the country that outright forbid municipal networks.