Digital Equity LA Summit Pushes CPUC to Ditch Priority Areas Map

As Los Angeles County officials work with community coalitions to improve high-speed Internet access in underserved communities across the region, the Digital Equity LA Summit focused on the challenges ahead: urging state officials to fix the broadband priority maps the state will use to target where to invest $2 billion in state broadband grant funds with the state months away from receiving over a billion additional dollars from the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Representing the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) were Michael Mullaney, President Alice Reynolds, and Michael Minkus. The group acknowledged that the preliminary, iterative maps “are not what many communities want to see” and that some of the poorest communities have not been designated priority areas, adding the CPUC will be updating its data and that “feedback was important.” The California Community Foundation’s (CCF) Digital Equity Initiative Director, Shayna Englin responded saying, "The Priority Areas Map are weighted overwhelmingly toward the wealthiest, most advantaged, best-connected communities in the state, and leaves out the most disadvantaged, least connected Californians." Lastly, Englin testified, the coalition’s suggested remedy: “Ditch the maps.” Given the short timelines and rapidly approaching deadlines to allocate federal dollars for last-mile deployment, Englin said she was not asking for the map to be revised, but recommended, it would be better to address the underlying issues with the model CPUC used to develop the map. And because that would take longer than current funding deadlines would allow, “we respectfully and humbly suggest that the Commission make minor revisions to the decision to rename the priority areas to ‘business opportunity areas’ or similar, revise the application scoring rubric to remove or dramatically reduce the 20 points awarded for proposing to build in one of these areas, and remove the direction to the Communications Division to develop priority areas."

[2/9/2023]