GoKawiilCalifornia is on the verge of accepting $1.86 billion in federal broadband grant funds, despite the Trump administration telling states they cannot enforce net neutrality rules on any Internet service provider that gets a piece of the grant money.
When the Trump administration overhauled the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program last year, it ruled that states must agree not to enforce any rate regulation or net neutrality rule on ISPs that receive funding. This is particularly problematic for California, which previously won a yearslong court battle to defend its state net neutrality law.
Similar to federal net neutrality rules repealed during the first Trump administration, California’s law prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic and says ISPs may not require fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to Internet users. While the first Trump administration lost its attempt to preempt state net neutrality laws, the second Trump administration is trying to achieve a similar result by making federal broadband money conditional on whether states agree to not enforce net neutrality.
Trump’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) says each state participating in BEAD must exempt ISPs from net neutrality rules and price regulations in all parts of the state, not just in areas where the ISP is given funds to deploy broadband service. The exemption from state laws and rules would apply for up to 14 years.
Under BEAD, each US state and territory receives an allotment that it can distribute to ISPs in exchange for deploying broadband to unserved and underserved areas. California and Illinois are the only states that haven’t finalized their funding, according to the BEAD progress dashboard maintained by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Tomorrow, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is scheduled to vote on a resolution to ratify the state’s final BEAD plan.