What's a High-Cost Area for BEAD and ACP?

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to determine how much each state is to receive in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding based on the number of locations in their state unserved by high-speed internet service. One component in the allocation is a determination of the number of “high cost” unserved locations in each state divided by the nationwide total of high-cost unserved locations. Congress also tasked NTIA with defining what “high-cost areas” are. NTIA defined “high cost” using a cost model that incorporates an area’s remoteness, population density, topography, and poverty levels, and measures costs over the life of the network. NTIA defined “area” to mean census block groups. Importantly, this definition of “high-cost area” also determines which households may be eligible for an increased ($75) benefit in the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program. As a result, NTIA carefully weighed poverty in defining cost given ACP-eligibility and worked closely with the FCC to ensure that the high-cost area definition did not impede the administrability of that benefit. More details, Census block data, and a census block map are available at internetforall.gov/program/broadband-equity-access-and-deployment-bead-program/bead-allocation-methodology [Editor's note: many thanks to Common Sense Media' State Broadband Policy Advisor, Drew Garner]