Connected Nation Buys Off Florida Challenger

[Commentary] Connected Nation, the big-telecom and cable front group, has won a lucrative broadband mapping contract in Florida by buying off the company that protested Connected Nation getting the contract. On October 2, with the blessing of the state of Florida, Sanborn dropped its challenge, and now we know why - Connected Nation used some of its high-bid money to clear the way by cutting Sanborn in on the action. According to the settlement agreement signed Oct. 1 and filed the next day, Connected Nation, Sanborn and the state of Florida officially gave Sanborn status as a subcontractor for the broadband mapping project. Under the deal, Connected Nation will contract with Sanborn "for no less than 40% and no more than 50% of $1,896,565 over a two-year period which represents the anticipated grant award for technical mapping." The final percentage will be based on how much work Sanborn does in comparison to the total project. That means that a company which wasn't even in the top six got back in the game to the tune of as much as $950,000, while the other five firms which lost to Connected Nation get zip. The Florida contract also as the possibility of a three-year extension, in which Sanborn would not participate. Under the terms of the agreement, Connected Nation, which, according to the state has a "longstanding relationship with providers across the nation," will manage the "initial engagement" of collecting the information while Sanborn will do the follow-up field-based collection from providers which don't have information readily available, counting and evaluation wireless towers and finding publicly available data sets. Sanborn will also validate some randomly selected data collected by Connected Nation and do the Geographic Information System (GIS) processing.