Senator Ted Cruz has written a letter to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), warning it to pause its $42 billion broadband program.

The program, Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD), was created by Congress in November 2021 and has been implemented by the NTIA.

However, in a letter, Cruz, who has just recently been re-elected to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), warned there will be significant changes to BEAD's implementation once Donald Trump begins his second term.

In his letter to the NTIA last week, Cruz criticized the program, asking the NTIA to "pause its unlawful BEAD activities."

“Under your leadership, NTIA has repeatedly ignored the text of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in administering the $42.45 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program," wrote Cruz.

"I, therefore, urge NTIA to pause unlawful, extraneous BEAD activities and avoid locking states into any final actions until you provide a detailed, transparent response to my original inquiry and take immediate, measurable steps to address these issues," he continued.

His comments were directed to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson. Cruz took exception with Davidson's recent admission that the Biden-Harris administration has spent $250 million in BEAD funding to hire government employees and contractors to administer a program.

"Instead of working to reverse course on the botched BEAD program, your agency responded by doubling down on its extralegal requirements and evading congressional inquiries," he added.

“The only substantive response in your letter revealed that since the program's inception, you have spent - or rather, wasted - over $250 million hiring government employees and contractors to ‘administer’ a program that, in practical terms, hasn’t even launched. This pattern of withholding actionable information and misusing taxpayer resources must end.”

Funding for the program is still in the process of being allocated on a state-by-state basis, and at present, nobody in the US has been connected via the BEAD program.

The program was set up to expand high-speed Internet access to all 50 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Cruz also called the NTIA's handling of BEAD "botched" and said that he questioned the NTIA's decision to withhold $1bn in program funding to build a central planning bureaucracy that "proceeded to impose extraneous mandates on the states and prevent the expeditious delivery of Internet access to unserved communities."

In response to Cruz's qualms in August, the NTIA noted that its Broadband Infrastructure Program has provided Internet service to more than 40,000 previously underserved households, while the same program has laid more than 2,700 miles of new or upgraded fiber.

The NTIA has also started awarding funds to states and territories to support investment in broadband infrastructure, including BEAD Program investments.

Cruz added that the Biden-Harris Administration has burdened the program, claiming that President-elect Trump will make substantial changes to the program.