New Broadband Maps Are Coming. They’ll Be Useless Unless We Also Invest in Research and Analytical Capacity.

New, more accurate and detailed broadband maps are on their way. The telecom policy crowd fervently hopes the data upgrade will help us better address digital divides and other issues. But maps and data alone won’t solve anything. Skill, expertise and time will all be required to study and use the new maps, and the resources required grow as the datasets become larger and more complex. Data scientists and researchers will need to ingest and clean the new data, visualize geographic shapes, build models, run regressions and more. This work involves cloud computing infrastructure and geospatial analysis tools, as well as statistics and econometric tools already in use.

Sarah Oh argued in a recent proposal to the Federal Communications Commission that the 5G Fund for Rural America should include a small amount to fund the research and analysis necessary to use the new maps. Specifically, she suggests that 1 percent of the proposed $9 billion — approximately $9 million per year for 10 years — could be used to fund this research. The FCC’s own economics staff could use some of these resources, while some should go to independent scholars in order to avoid conflicts of interest that may arise when an agency is in charge of evaluating itself. This research fund, which represents less than half a percent of total annual USF spending and less than half the amount spent on USF administration, could yield substantial new insights, particularly if allocated to academics who could, for example, direct studies by graduate students on a host of issues.

[Scott Wallsten is president and senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute. Sarah Oh is senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute.]