Data & Mapping

Improvements in our state broadband mapping data and related resources has revealed that we have more households and businesses without access to broadband than understood in 2021 (>198,000 with no service or insufficient service @ 25/3 and >291,000 @ 100/20). As the new Federal Communications Commission "fabric map" updates coverage through a challenge process, it is expected this number will reveal further deficits in coverage.

Brandy Reitter, executive director of the Colorado Broadband Office (CBO), discussed what the state’s broadband coverage looks like, local challenges with deployment, and progress on the funding front. In terms of coverage gaps, Reitter estimates there are about 166,000 households and 360,000 locations across Colorado without access to high-speed broadband, with over half of those households (around 93,000) having cited a lack of physical infrastructure as the main obstacle to broadband access.

January 13, 2023 was the date set by National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for challenges to be made to the National Broadband Map, which will be used to determine how much money goes to each state in the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband funding program.

State governments were asked to submit challenges to the accuracy of the Federal Communications Commission's new National Broadband Map ahead of a Jan. 13, 2023 deadline. So, how have states navigated this process, and what are they working on next until these funds are allocated? 

In order to meet the urgency of this moment to connect the unconnected, we continue to target June 30, 2023 as the date by which we will allocate each state and territory’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding for high-speed Internet service.

States have already submitted more than 300,000 location challenges since the Federal Communications Commission opened the door for them to request corrections to its new and improved broadband map. But as a deadline for availability challenges looms, some states said they’ve encountered issues with the submission process. The FCC said that while individual challenges are visible on its broadband map interface, it is not reporting aggregate figures about the challenges it has received. More than 344,000 challenges have been filed between nine states.

As the January 13 deadline looms for states to challenge the current Federal Communications Commission broadband coverage map, many states are asking for more time. I'm starting to wonder, however, whether more time is actually all that important. The FCC process is NOT building a location-level map of actual delivered broadband speeds, but rather a map of the performance that providers say they can deliver if a customer requests it. So let's try to put all of this together and see what it means. For me, a few key takeaways stand out (All of this is not to say that state efforts to understa

Arlington County, Virginia, is surveying residents and businesses to understand how they use broadband internet service and if their access can be improved. The survey is part of a $250,000 study that could inform ways to bridge the digital divide between residents with good internet connectivity and those without it, using the county’s existing fiber-optic network, dubbed ConnectArlington.

It is unfortunate timing that the new Federal Communications Commission broadband map was issued in the middle of the process of trying to determine the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant funding. Congress said that the amount of funding that will go to each state must be based upon the FCC map – and the first draft is clearly flawed. However, assuming that that grant funding question gets resolved somehow, there remains the bigger issue of whether the new FCC map will ever accurately portray broadband availability.

Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NM) and Jacky Rosen (D-NM) sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking the body to reconsider maps drafted for the Silver State's broadband Internet connectivity, calling the drafts "deeply flawed" and warning that such maps could perpetuate the digital divide among the state's urban and rural areas.