NTIA CostQuest Data Support

The Department of Commerce/Enterprise Services intends to negotiate a sole source, firm fixed price contract with CostQuest Associates for Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric, Technology Availability Likelihood (TAL), and Network Cost Model data to meet the congressional mandate at the estimated price of $49.9 Million. This procurement will provide data to support operational needs for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD), Digital Equity (DE), the Access Broadband Act, as well as the Internet for All initiative. Several use cases that National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA), Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth (OICG) plans to use the data for include:

• Identification and use of un and under Served Broadband Serviceable locations as identified by the Federal Communications Commission for the use in the BEAD program 
• Defining high-cost areas to support OICG efforts to develop an allocation model for its BEAD program and to support Eligible Entities use in their grant programs 
• Defining extremely high-cost areas to support Eligible Entity grant programs 
• Data consistency with the dataset used by the FCC in the Broadband Data Collection  
• Supporting OICG efforts to review and assess eligible entities’ build out proposals 
• Enabling Eligible Entities to define project areas based on underserved and unserved locations and cost to deploy broadband 
• Reporting and tracking of projects during deployment 
• Supporting interagency Federal and state coordination to avoid duplication/overbuild of broadband deployment and funding 
• Evaluating the impact of broadband deployment (e.g., change in broadband availability)