Gerrymandering may come to broadband buildout, courtesy of the 80% rule

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is clear: the $42.5 billion for broadband buildout should prioritize projects for the unserved. Specifically, states should prioritize projects where 80% of the locations served by the project are unserved. It may be impossible to reach all the unserved with projects that are 80% or more unserved without gerrymandering the project areas or changing the rules. Census block groups work well as a proxy for broadband project areas because they’re not too big and not too small. There are 5.9 million populated block groups nationally with an average of 24 housing units per block group. I’m not suggesting that project should follow block group boundaries, only that they work well as a visualization for the concentration of unserved locations. However, nationally, 1 million of the 7.8 million unserved locations are in block groups that are already 80%+ unserved. By contrast, 3.6 million unserved locations are in block groups that are less than 50% unserved. The only solutions I can think of are to allow gerrymandering of the project areas, relax the 80% rule, or include additional locations as unserved for the purpose of defining the project areas.