January 2023

January 13, 2023 was a major milestone in the process of moving $42.5 billion from the federal government to states to distribute mostly to rural areas to build new, modern internet access networks. January 13th marked the deadline for error corrections (called challenges) to the official national broadband map that will be used to determine how much each state will get.

Improvements in our state broadband mapping data and related resources has revealed that we have more households and businesses without access to broadband than understood in 2021 (>198,000 with no service or insufficient service @ 25/3 and >291,000 @ 100/20). As the new Federal Communications Commission "fabric map" updates coverage through a challenge process, it is expected this number will reveal further deficits in coverage.