Data & Mapping

Recently I wrote about how there are too many locations in the National Broadband Map when you compare it with the recently-released Census count of housing units. In rural areas, there are 30.1 million housing and business units according the National Broadband Map, and 24.6 million housing units according to the Census. This isn’t just academic.

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) launched the Digital Equity Dashboard, an innovative and practical tool designed to help school districts and communities leverage data to close digital equity gaps. The dashboard integrates various national data sets into one comprehensive dashboard.

There is one mapping issue that unfortunately messed up the count of eligible passings for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program grants and that is going to be a real concern. Both T-Mobile and Verizon have activated rural cell sites that can deliver home broadband using licensed spectrum that can be 100/20 Mbps or a little faster.

When Mike Sanders started his job as Executive Director for the Oklahoma Broadband Office in May 2023, the state’s broadband office had four employees. At the end of June 2023, he expected that number to hit 15. Previously, Director Sanders served six terms in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, where he chaired the House Utilities Committee and Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, was vice-chair of the Human Services Committee, and served as House Majority Leader. Prior to that, he worked for President George W.

Where might consumers be paying the most for cable and internet service? New data from doxo, a billing aggregator, points to East Coast states like New Hampshire, Vermont and Delaware. According to doxo’s analysis of the most and least expensive states for cable and internet, New Hampshire came out on top with an average monthly bill of $151 per month, which is paid by 83% of households in the state.

How can we make the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding go as far as possible? The answer is that state grant plans need to be laser focused on how to generate competition and keep costs as low as possible. If we can do that, we stretch the BEAD dollars as far as possible. If we don’t, we run out of money. It’s really quite easy to construct this framework. We only need two pieces of data: the number of unserved and underserved locations, and what we pay to reach them.

The Vermont Community Broadband Board announced that the state will receive $229 million in federal funding from a White House initiative to expand high-speed broadband access. That figure is some $50 million more than state officials had anticipated — good news for the effort to wire up rural Vermont. In the lead-up to the announcement, officials worried that Vermont would get too small a piece of the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program pie.

The Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Data Task Force announced that entities can begin submitting bulk challenges to the latest, June 2023 version of the Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric. Bulk Fabric challenges submitted in advance of September 8, 2023, are most likely to be reviewed and adjudicated in time to be accounted for in the next iteration of the Fabric (December 2023).

The Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Data Task Force announced that the Broadband Data Collection (BDC) filing window for submitting broadband availability and other data as of June 30, 2023, opened on Monday, July 3, 2023. Facilities-based broadband service providers may begin to file in the BDC system data that reflects where they made mass-market broadband internet access service available as of June 30, 2023. Such entities, as well as providers of fixed voice services, must also submit the subscription data as of June 30, 2023 required under Form 477 in the BDC system.

A day after the Biden administration announced how it will distribute its nearly $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Accessibility, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program, a group of state broadband officials touted the hundreds of millions of dollars they’re set to oversee, but with a note of curiosity as to why their awards weren’t greater. While this infusion of cash is undoubtedly cause for celebration, some