Investigations
Lake Providence lost its six-million-dollar fiber award to Starlink
East Carroll Parish residents said unreliable service forced families to leave as BEAD rules shifted toward satellite.
In Lake Providence, Louisiana, a planned fiber build worth more than six million dollars gave way to a Starlink award of about one hundred fifty thousand dollars for two hundred four locations. More Perfect Union reported from East Carroll Parish, which Time once called the poorest place in America.
Cassandra Toston grew up on a family property outside town and moved to Arlington, Texas, for work. When her mother was diagnosed with early onset dementia, Toston wanted to bring her home, but she said patchy service made remote work impossible on calls with dozens of colleagues. Her mother died before dependable broadband arrived.
Merchants and teachers described the same bottleneck. A coffee shop could not reliably run card payments when Wi-Fi stalled. Classrooms staggered online standardized tests across weeks because too many students could not share the connection.
Congress created the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program in 2021 and sent more than forty-two billion dollars to states to close rural gaps. Biden-era rules treated fiber as the priority technology. By late 2024, Louisiana was among only three states that had finished preliminary BEAD steps, and Lake Providence was in line for fiber funding.
After Trump returned to the White House, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr pushed a technology-neutral rewrite that opened awards to satellite and fixed wireless. State broadband officers told interviewers the shift redirected hundreds of millions of dollars toward Starlink.
Researchers cited in the report counted roughly four hundred seventy-six thousand Starlink locations worth about seven hundred seventy million dollars under the new awards, making SpaceX the largest BEAD vendor. A separate study found fewer than half of Starlink subscribers met the FCC broadband speed benchmark.
In Louisiana's fifth Congressional district alone, almost three thousand sites that had been slated for fiber moved to satellite. The state's approved BEAD proposal logged dozens of public comments from East Carroll residents opposing Starlink for Lake Providence, citing cost, weather outages, and fiber already built to the edge of town.
On June 11, 2026, ConnectLA signed a statewide grant agreement with SpaceX to serve ten thousand six hundred thirty-five locations. Governor Jeff Landry praised the deal in a press release. SpaceX vice president Lauren Dreyer said participants would receive Starlink service through BEAD.
Musk donated more than two hundred fifty million dollars to Trump's 2024 campaign, and Carr wrote the telecom chapter of Project 2025 praising low Earth orbit satellites. Texas attorney general candidate Nathan Johnson said Starlink's state contracts looked corrupt and promised an investigation if he won office.
With state Republicans in control, the faith group Delta Interfaith raised private money to extend fiber to rural homes outside Lake Providence proper. Toston said that network let her move back and do call-center work, though homes inside town still lack the lines businesses ask for before opening in empty storefronts.
Source video: The Government Spent $42 Billion to Fix Rural Internet. Where It Went Will Shock You.