D.C. Memo: Charter CFO Voices Concerns About BEAD Regulations

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Charter: Top officials at Charter Communications continue to raise concerns that BEAD program rules could deter the company from seeking broadband deployment projects in states. “The impediment really is I think some states, it appears, could have [BEAD] rules that are not conducive to private investment or to our investment. And so there could be some limitation to the total amount we invest that's related to our lack of willingness to bid in states where we won't be able to get the returns because the rules aren't conducive to it,” Charter CFO Jessica Fischer said at the J.P. Morgan conference yesterday in Boston. Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey has said he would keep the company away from states that tied BEAD to restrictive pricing and labor policies. Fischer said BEAD represented a unique opportunity that Charter did not want to see go to the competition. “We continue to have reason to go after those BEAD builds,” she said. “I think that there'll be a good amount of them available for us to get.” Charter is already expanding its rural profile from funding it received under the FCC’s RDOF 2020 reverse auction. Charter has about 1.05 million RDOF locations in all with about $1.2 billion in federal support.