During her first ten months in office, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Administrator Arielle Roth has quietly achieved some impressive results for the American public. Her “Benefit of the Bargain” initiative removed unnecessary conditions on Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program buildout grants, saving $22 billion in broadband deployment costs. NTIA’s success has spawned something of a parlor game in telecommunications circles: With Congress seemingly uninterested in clawing these savings back, what will the agency do with this unexpected surplus?

The statute provides that funds not allocated for network deployment could be spent on related purposes permitted by NTIA to facilitate program goals. A December 2025 executive order muddied the waters a bit by declaring that states with onerous AI laws were ineligible to receive these non-deployment funds. The Executive Order sought agency guidance on non-deployment funds by March 11, though last week Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick indicated this guidance may still be a month or two away.

Here’s an idea: Let states invest some of this surplus to upgrade the aging digital infrastructure in our nation’s correctional facilities. As part of its primary deployment initiative, BEAD will bring broadband access to the premises of most of America’s prisons and jails. But many of these facilities will be unable to take advantage of these connections due to poor internal wiring, legacy telecommunications systems, and device shortages that keep incarcerated populations on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Admittedly, felons are not a particularly sympathetic class. But as I’ve written before, this population is trapped in a broken market. Facilities award exclusive contracts to telecom providers and have incentives to choose based on site commissions (payments from the providers to the correctional facility) rather than service quality or affordability. Once selected, a provider has a monopoly over communication with a facility’s population. Two companies dominate this industry and have little incentive to innovate. As a result, prisoners often pay exorbitant rates to call families and frequently lack access to advanced digital services. Commission efforts to remedy some of these concerns have been delayed by implementation costs.

Improving digital access for incarcerated individuals isn’t just the decent thing to do; it’s also good policy. Research consistently shows that incarcerated individuals who maintain regular contact with family are less likely to reoffend and better able to reintegrate after release. An AEI study by Grant Duwe reported similar benefits from extending prisoner access to education and employment programming while incarcerated. A recent RAND Corporation study explicitly recommended leveraging technological solutions to deliver programming and provide additional services aimed at improving reentry outcomes.

In my home state of Massachusetts, nonprofit startup Ameelio has pushed to disrupt the market for inmate communications services. I’ve discussed Ameelio’s model elsewhere, noting its success at offering not just low-cost audio and video calls to prisoners, but also email, educational programming, and reentry services. In a lengthy blog post, Ameelio CEO April Feng explains the obstacles for companies like this trying to bridge the digital divide for incarcerated populations. At a minimum, states should audit the network capacities of their correctional facilities. In many facilities, outdated wiring and inadequate internal networks mean that even when broadband reaches the prison grounds, incarcerated individuals still cannot reliably access educational platforms or telehealth services; identifying and remedying these deficiencies is a critical first step. Feng also notes a critical shortage of hardware such as tablets and Chromebooks, which can increase the number of seats available and reduce prisoner conflicts over a small pool of shared resources. BEAD funds can help address these glaring needs. Any federally funded infrastructure should also remain vendor-neutral. Otherwise, public dollars could simply reinforce the same exclusive-provider monopolies that created the problem in the first place.

Upgrading internal network capacity can also improve prison operations. Correctional facility staff could benefit from more reliable, up-to-date technologies that improve safety, situational awareness, and operational efficiency. Facilities could implement advanced security solutions such as real-time monitoring systems, high-resolution surveillance cameras, automated alert systems, and modern communication platforms, helping create a safer and more secure environment for both staff and inmates.

The case for directing a portion of BEAD’s non-deployment surplus toward correctional facilities is straightforward: Few populations remain as disconnected from modern digital life, and few infrastructure investments could produce greater social returns. BEAD will already bring broadband to many prisons and jails. Ensuring that those connections are usable inside the facilities would require relatively modest additional investment while improving education, family communication, reentry outcomes, and institutional safety. If NTIA is looking for high-impact uses of its unexpected surplus, modernizing prison communications infrastructure is an opportunity worth serious consideration.