This article was originally published by The Benton Institute for Broadband and Society.

America is about to choose between broadband that’s good enough today, or infrastructure that can underpin the future of the U.S. economy.

With the final rules out for the reformed Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, states have 90 days to rerun their broadband selection processes. One of the biggest changes is that fiber is no longer defined as the preferred technology. In its place is a “technology-neutral” approach that, at first sight, favors the cheapest bids, opening the door to alternative technologies, with low-earth orbit satellite (LEO) slated to be a big winner.

Far from representing a prudent fiscal shift, we’ve argued that fiber’s resilience and long-term value make it a better investment for most communities. And when we look beyond residential access to consider broadband’s role in powering industry, innovation, and economic competitiveness, the limits of LEO become clearer still.

Foundational for economic development

Any business considering where to open a branch, build a factory, or expand operations looks for high-speed broadband. Ask any economic development leader to name their top priorities, and fiber connectivity will almost certainly be near the top.

We saw this play out in Macon County, Alabama, where a $500,000 investment from Connect Humanity alongside funds from Rural LISC, public grants, and private capital helped build a fiber network that has already unlocked $180 million in new manufacturing investment. The county’s economic development director, Joe Turnham, called fiber the “missing link,” to attract investment, drive job growth, and expand services like telehealth at Tuskegee University.

Try running a high-tech manufacturing facility on a Starlink connection and see how far you get. Businesses, hospitals, schools, and emergency services require the capacity, reliability, and low-latency performance that wired fiber optics can best deliver consistently.

The future of farming runs on fiber

To see the cost of second-best connectivity, we can look to America’s farms. Agriculture is undergoing a revolution. Just as tractors once replaced oxen, today’s farmers are embracing data—deploying GPS-guided equipment, remote sensors, drone surveillance, and AI-powered analytics to boost yields, reduce waste, and enhance environmental sustainability.

But one in four U.S. farmers still lacks any internet access at all. Nearly half do not have the broadband speeds required to adopt precision agriculture technologies. This leaves them—like many rural Americans—on the wrong side of the digital divide and unable to reap the benefits of digital innovation.

Granted, for many farms, satellite internet has been a godsend. With download speeds reaching 100 Mbps, services like Starlink can support core cloud-based farm management tasks. In open fields with clear lines of sight, LEO can deliver service to areas that had none.

But LEO has limitations. Service can be disrupted by severe weather or solar activity. Upload speeds are often too slow to handle the large volumes of data farms generate—like drone footage, sensor streams, and yield maps—which must be sent to the cloud. Even brief outages during planting or harvest can be costly. A recent Ookla report found that just 17.4 percent of U.S. Starlink users experienced broadband-level performance, largely due to insufficient upload capacity—a major constraint for precision agriculture.

By contrast, fiber offers symmetrical speeds and virtually unlimited bandwidth. It is the backbone needed for the diverse wireless systems that make whole-farm connectivity possible—from soil sensors in distant fields to smart equipment and monitoring systems relaying data back to the farm’s operations hub. It is future-proof, ready to power generations of agricultural technologies. 

The farming sector demonstrates the value of satellite and other alternatives as short-term stop-gaps, but BEAD offers the chance to go beyond “good enough.”

The program was on track to deliver fiber to the vast majority of unserved locations, with state broadband offices using local knowledge to determine where fiber was feasible and where alternatives made sense. This pragmatic, fiber-first strategy was the right one.

So where do the ‘tech-neutral’ reforms to BEAD leave states?

Here’s the good news: states still have the power to keep fiber at the center of their broadband strategies. As Carol Mattey has written for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, while BEAD now allows a wider range of technologies, states still get to define “priority broadband projects”—those first in line for funding.

Congress made clear that these projects must serve both residential and business needs. That means symmetrical speeds, high reliability, and the ability to scale with demand. As the statute puts it, they must be “capable of easily scaling speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses and support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services.”

States must look beyond residential access and ask whether applicants are ready to support economic development. If a technology can’t power high-tech manufacturing, precision agriculture, or AI-era infrastructure, then fiber should remain the priority.

Delivering for rural America

The decisions state broadband offices make now—and how the NTIA chooses to support them—will shape the economic future of rural communities and entire industries for generations to come.

Yes, LEO satellites and fixed wireless have an important role in our connectivity mix (note: wireless networks still need a fiber connection). But if BEAD devolves into a race to the cheapest viable option, sidelining fiber in the process, we risk missing a once-in-a-generation chance to prepare for rural America’s long-term prosperity.

The smart strategy is a layered one: satellites and fixed wireless for coverage short-term, fiber for permanence and growth. That future is within reach—if states wield the tools they’ve been given with ambition and courage.