Too much of America’s infrastructure is decrepit, and the country for the first time in at least a generation stands to right that wrong if Congress can put the unmet needs of the people it serves before politics.

But it’s a big if, and plenty of potential roadblocks and spoilers could render the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill dead on arrival. The legislation currently under consideration would also allocate $65 billion to improve the nation’s broadband infrastructure.

The impact of this landmark deal would reach from sea to shining sea and pockets in between. Underserved communities that can’t access or can’t afford broadband are an obvious beneficiary. Meanwhile, telecom network operators, equipment suppliers, vendors, and municipal entities are keen to see a pace of development and investment that could reshape their position for the next decade.

There’s a lot riding on this deal, and nothing about it is certain.

“I don’t want to prognosticate as to whether the infrastructure bill passes, there’s a degree of uncertainty there, but if in its current form it actually does make its way into law, that’s going to change the landscape of the broadband business in this country,” AT&T CEO John Stankey said at an investor conference.

“It will also change my posture and point of view to where we should be playing as a company,” he continued. “And as a result of that, I would lean into it.”

While there are two categories of people disadvantaged by lack of broadband access — affordability and availability — providing broadband access to individuals at a reasonable price will create the biggest impact, according to Tim Crawford, analyst and strategic advisor to CIOs at AVOA.

Broadband-related funding in the infrastructure bill aims to address these challenges. “For broadband service providers, funding shifts the return on investment assessment to include more areas where building broadband coverage to unserved or underserved areas makes sense from a bottom-line perspective,” explained Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, senior research director at Gartner.

“Getting broadband to more households is only part of the problem, so addressing the affordability of service and devices as well as funding local programs to teach people how to use and benefit from broadband connections is key to solving digital inclusion challenges,” she added.

The U.S. broadband market remains pockmarked with extensive white spots, including some of the most affluent parts of the country, and funding allocated by the infrastructure bill is expected to focus on these issues in a more comprehensive manner than existing federal programs, GlobalData Service Director John Byrne explained.

“The funding will accelerate broadband deployment in underserved areas, and might even create meaningful competition in areas where one of the dominant players has a de facto monopoly,” he added.

Will Townsend, senior analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, expects the funding to have the greatest impact in rural parts of the country. “It’s been a chicken and egg [situation] for service providers to invest in lower-population densities given the cost of infrastructure and challenges to amortize the investment,” he noted.

How and where this potential $65 billion in federal funds flows will have long-term implications for smaller, regional operators and community-run or municipal-owned networks, according to Dimitris Mavrakis, senior research director at ABI Research. “There are indications that President Joe Biden’s plan is to empower community providers rather than traditional carriers or cable companies, so we should expect to see more activity in this area,” he said.

“If indeed community-based providers are funded and prioritized, then it is likely that the broadband market will become a more fragmented and distributed business landscape compared to the market today, which is dominated by large carriers,” Mavrakis said. “It is very likely that this model will create new markets and help close the digital divide in the U.S.”

Nationwide carriers stand to receive some funding to expand broadband deployments, but it’s unclear how much will be split between the large and small carriers, he added.

Townsend expects funding allocated to companies to flow in a different direction. “I believe that both traditional broadband and 5G deployments will benefit from the funding, but don’t expect that carriers will receive funding directly, rather it will likely be earmarked for infrastructure providers,” he said.

On the vendor front, Byrne called out fiber transmission and packet gear vendors such as Ciena and Infinera, as well as fiber suppliers like Corning as those that stand to gain the greatest share of government funding. “We should also not rule out the role the cloud providers can play for expanding points of presence with or without an attached operator,” he added.

Meanwhile, 5G remains a wild card of sorts. “If we accept, and I think we should, 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) as a meaningful broadband access technology, it is possible that some of the 5G operators will see the new broadband funding as an opportunity,” Byrne explained.

However, he adds, achieving profitability of such an endeavor won’t be easy where 5G fixed-wireless access (FWA) requires fiber all the way to the radio, but it could be a viable alternative in less remote but still underserved areas.

Crawford is less enthusiastic about 5G’s prospects in this realm. He doesn’t expect 5G to demonstrably change the factors causing the digital divide because while it might help on the access front to some degree, it doesn’t address cost without other levers in play.

Overall, analysts are generally positive about the potential opportunities ahead, but none assume $65 million will close the digital divide completely. At best, it might narrow gaps in affordability and access.

The bill could also reshape the market by uplifting smaller carriers and opening windows for new entrants. “The infrastructure bill may indeed provide fixed broadband to areas that were not adequately served by existing carriers and also create the foundation for many new companies to enter the community broadband market,” Mavrakis concluded.