Engineering firm Dewberry Alaska—in collaboration with mapping company Ecopia AI, Rasmuson Foundation, and the State of Alaska—is working on a broadband map based on what Ecopia AI is calling “an accurate, up-to-date and complete map of every building, in both rural and urban areas, in the state.” Ecopia AI’s specialty is applying artificial intelligence (AI) to satellite imagery to identify buildings. Using data from Ecopia AI, Dewberry’s job is to identify broadband serviceable locations throughout the state for purposes of allocating funding for the state in the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Karl Bode recently wrote an excellent article highlighting the overhyping of wireless technologies. No wireless technology has been a bigger flop than 5G when comparing the hype to the eventual reality. The wireless carriers and vendors blitzed the country in a coordinated effort to paint 5G as the solution that would bring broadband everywhere. Along with the public, the cellular carriers did a non-stop blitz on federal officials, getting them to buy into the amazing wireless future. The main problem with all of this hype is that the rhetoric didn’t match the specifications for 5G that were adopted by international standards bodies. The 5G specifications included a few key goals: get cellular speeds over 100 Mbps, allow for more simultaneous users at a given cell site, allow a cellphone to use two different spectrum bands at the same time, and allow a user to connect to more than one cell site if the demand needed it. The primary purpose of the 5G spec was to eliminate cell site congestion in places where there are a lot of people trying to simultaneously use the cellular network. Nothing in the 5G specification is earth-shattering. The specification, as a whole, seemed like the natural evolution of cellular to better accommodate a world where everybody has a cell phone. I have no doubt that the public will buy into the hype and want 6G phones when they hit the market, but I also know that none of them will see any difference in performance.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, established two new broadband grant programs—the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) and Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP), administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) within the Department of Commerce. NTIA’s process generally aligned with recommended practices. However, NTIA’s current performance goals and measures will not tell the whole story of whether these programs succeed. In TBCP, NTIA does not have a performance goal or measure for funding broadband use and adoption projects on tribal lands—a stated program purpose. NTIA also has no way of measuring if the broadband deployed under TBCP is reliable and affordable even though it established those as goals of the program. Similarly, NTIA established affordability as a goal for broadband deployed under BIP but does not have a way of measuring affordability. NTIA officials said that they are still developing performance goals and measures for the programs, but without more complete goals and measures, the extent to which these two important grant programs, totaling billions of dollars, succeed will be unclear. As NTIA prepares for the next round of funding for the TBCP program, establishing clear goals and measures that reflect all of the program’s purposes prior to receiving applications and making award decisions would help NTIA ensure that it is making award decisions that consider those goals and measures. In addition, although NTIA has taken some steps to identify fraud risks, NTIA’s actions did not align with leading practices for fraud risk management in two key ways. First, NTIA has not designated a dedicated entity to lead its fraud risk management efforts. Instead, NTIA has several offices with different responsibilities associated with TBCP and BIP oversight without a clearly designated entity leading these efforts. Leading practices indicate that one entity should lead efforts to identify and manage fraud risks. Second, NTIA has not conducted fraud risk assessments for TBCP or BIP, as called for by leading practices. Without designating an entity to oversee fraud risk management activities and conducting a fraud risk assessment, NTIA lacks assurance that its controls are mitigating fraud risks in TBCP and BIP and that it is sufficiently positioned to combat fraud in the programs.