Members of Congress to NTIA and FCC: Don't Delay BEAD for Better Broadband Maps

We write with great appreciation of your efforts to implement the historic provisions of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to make high-speed internet accessible and affordable for all Americans. Your agencies have been working tirelessly to implement the law's Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment ("BEAD") Program so that the nation's stubborn and unacceptable digital divide can be narrowed as soon as possible. We were pleased to see the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's ("NTIA") January 13 blog post that appropriately recognizes, "Every day we delay is another day that communities are not connected." For this reason, we do not support an extension of the January 13 target date to submit service area mapping challenges because such an extension would result in the delay of NTIA's June 30 target date for the allocation of BEAD Program funds. While accurate maps are undeniably important, the benefit of any marginal improvement to the maps from a delay is outweighed by the harm to unserved and underserved communities.