Data & Mapping

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking further comment on the 5G Fund for Rural America to reignite the FCC's plan to expand the deployment of 5G service to rural communities that remain trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide.

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 8.3 million households lack access to high-speed broadband. Providing universal access to communications service—initially voice service and now broadband—has always been a challenge in the United States. Although connecting urban, populated areas is relatively easy, serving sparsely populated rural areas is difficult due to differences in terrain and population density.

The Utah Broadband Center (UBC), part of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, asks for public feedback on Utah’s draft of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Initial Proposal Volume 1. The total funding allocation for Utah is $317.4 million, which will be distributed to various broadband projects through a competitive grant process. To ensure the greatest impact for Utahns, community members and stakeholders are encouraged to provide input to the state’s proposed process to identify areas needing broadband service.

I want to start by thanking the Subcommittee for its decision to provide full funding for the Federal Communications Commission in your Fiscal Year 2024 FSGG bill. The work of the FCC matters. I’d like to highlight some the Commission’s recent work, made possible by your support of our budget, under my leadership. First, the Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program, the largest broadband affordability program in our nation’s history, now helps 21 million households pay for high-speed internet service.

Fixed wireless access (FWA) speeds are fast for those close to a transmission tower but slower as the distance increases. According to speed tests from a Verizon tower in a suburban county, the closest locations are getting 300 Mbps, while customers just over a mile out are getting around 75 Mbps, and by the third-mile radius, speeds have dropped a lot closer to 25 Mbps download.

In June, the Biden administration allocated $42.45 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding among states—the largest single pot of federal broadband spending in our country’s history. Biden officials at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) made these allocations despite repeated requests from lawmakers and communities across the country to first improve the data underlying NTIA’s funding decisions.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is requiring state broadband offices to have one final mapping challenge at the state level before the state can issue the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants. This final challenge is the one that folks have been waiting for since the NTIA suggests that there can be a challenge against the claimed broadband speeds. My consulting firm has been working with communities, and we are still seeing a lot of inaccurate information.

Virginia Tech bested the Federal Communications Commission in mapping the commonwealth’s broadband needs. The prize: an additional $250 million in federal money to help fill those high-speed internet voids. The Virginia Tech’s Center for Geospatial Information Technology calculated that the FCC had undercounted by 180,000 underserved locations and challenged the numbers. The FCC conceded about 80,000 locations that are now eligible for support from the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act’s (IIJA) Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the 46 million U.S. residents living in rural areas make up 14 percent of the U.S. population. Historically, internet providers have underserved rural areas due to a myriad of factors, including smaller rural populations providing fewer customers, decreased rural adoption rates, and more difficult rural terrain in comparison to urban areas. Even when internet is available in rural areas, less competition among limited providers may result in higher prices and limited speed options for residents.