Efforts underway to provide high speed internet access to rural areas of Illinois

Now that the federal government included billions of tax dollars in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to improve internet access to more areas, the task of broadband mapping in Illinois is underway. The Illinois Office of Broadband and its mapping vendor, Connected Nation, are using the mapping efforts to provide internet access to hard to reach areas and make best use of all available federal broadband funds. Ashley Hitt, vice president of GeoAnalytics at Connected Nation, said the organization is updating the state broadband maps with the most accurate, detailed data possible. “Being able to aggregate all of that together, then being able to run some estimates on the number of served and underserved households there are across the state, so that way we can then look county-by-county and see which counties are the least connected that may need more assistance,” Hitt said.