Data & Mapping

Brendan Carr, newly minted chair of the Federal Communications Commission, has been plenty busy making his mark in the telecommunications regulatory landscape. Here's a look at the most notable events that have transpired during Carr's first 30 days—and what we can expect in the months to come:

OpenVault released the Broadband Insights Report for the fourth quarter of 2024. Highlights include:

The Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has launched the Broadband Equity Study Story Map, an interactive tool designed to visualize internet access disparities across the city. The Story Map combines data analysis with personal experiences from residents impacted by the digital divide, offering a comprehensive review of the challenges and opportunities for improving broadband access. The Broadband Equity Study Story Map aims to:

An interactive map shows how much progress Internet providers have made building out high-speed broadband across Washtenaw County (MI). Several Internet providers have been connecting more homes and businesses with fiber optic cable. Some addresses are up and running. Some residents can expect to be hooked up soon and other work is ongoing.

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund was the biggest attempt at the time to solve the rural broadband gap. The Federal Communications Commission had originally slated $20.4 billion to award to internet service providers in a reverse auction, meaning the ISP willing to take the smallest subsidy for a given area won the funding. Winners were to collect the funding over 10 years and had up to seven years to build the promised networks. The program ran into problems in several dramatic ways.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration recently issued a directive encouraging states to get internet service providers (ISPs) to remove locations from Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment grant applications that can’t be served by broadband.

We just spent a few years agonizing over the Federal Communications Committee broadband maps. The reasons we’ve cared is easy to understand. The FCC maps were first used to allocate Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment funding to states. States that spent a lot of time to clean up the maps seem to have gotten a better share of the BEAD funding. We’ll soon be at the end of the BEAD map challenges, and that makes me wonder if anybody will ever care about the FCC maps after this. I’m positive that when BEAD is over, the FCC and everybody else will lose interest in the broadband maps.

The Colorado Broadband Office (CBO) is seeking information from broadband providers who currently offer service to locations eligible for the BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment) program. This information will help the CBO ensure that BEAD funding is directed to unserved and underserved areas. This notice outlines the process for demonstrating existing service and claiming locations as served, which may preclude those locations from receiving BEAD funding. For a location to be eligible for this process, it must meet both of the following criteria:

According to Albert Einstein, insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Congress is taking this to a whole new level with its latest discussions about how to “fix” broadband internet deployment across the United States. The most vociferous criticisms of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program have centered on how long it has taken to deploy. On its face, that is a fair criticism. Contextualized, however, the criticism does not hold water. No one is asking why it took so long. The simple answer: Maps.

Sen Roger Wicker (R-MS) reintroduced the Proper Leadership to Align Networks (PLAN) for Broadband Act. The legislation requires the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to develop a national strategy to close the digital divide, as well as a plan to implement this strategy. Previous reports from the Government Accountability Office found that federal broadband efforts are fragmented and overlapping.