The December National Broadband Mapping Coalition monthly call featured representatives from the Louisiana and Virginia broadband offices, sharing their experiences in preparing responses for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program challenge process. Due to the holidays, the call took place a week earlier than usual on December 19, 2023.
For the December call, Coalition leader Dustin Loup welcomed representatives from Louisiana and Virginia, the two states that have made the most progress in preparing BEAD challenges. Dustin invited Thomas Tyler, Deputy Director for Connect LA, and Chandler Vaughan, Broadband Policy Analyst at the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, to share the insights gained from their experiences.
Thomas Tyler began by noting that the Louisiana broadband office, Connect LA, has been in place for 2-1/2 years, with an emphasis on outreach to local entities in the state. Their BEAD response preparations began about five weeks ahead of the start of the challenge process with stakeholder meetings that drew between three hundred and four hundred total attendees. Thomas observed that many stakeholders lack capacity to participate in the challenge process. Under the circumstances, matching resources to need based on available information at any point in time is the best possible course. He also recommended submitting early and often to allow time for review and updates if needed.
Virginia launched its broadband office in 2017, according to Chandler Vaughan. He went on to share some of the difficulties they encountered in collecting data and submitting challenges to the FCC maps used to determine eligibility for BEAD funding. For example, out of 4 million individual challenges they submitted, less than half—1.9 million—were accepted by the FCC. In addition, only 77 out of 1,500 speed tests collected satisfied NTIA criteria. They also experienced difficulties in collecting clean address information from municipalities and community anchors in their state. Chandler cited insufficient information and a lack of evidence as their biggest problems.
Following their opening presentations, Thomas and Chandler took questions from participants on the call and offered additional guidance on preparing challenges. Much of the discussion concerned the quality of mapping data and finding reliable sources. For example, Google Earth can be useful for small datasets, but has difficulty mapping entire counties or larger areas with sufficient granularity to identify locations eligible for BEAD funding. There are also inconsistencies between FCC funding maps and claims by Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs) and Internet service providers (ISPs) regarding served v. underserved v. unserved locations.
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