Experts Urge States, Public to Participate in FCC Mapping Challenges Ahead of BEAD

It’s “really important” that states take advantage of the FCC’s new broadband maps and challenge process before NTIA allocates its funding for the broadband, equity, access and deployment program, said Technology Policy Institute President Scott Wallsten during a Fiber Broadband Association webinar Wednesday. “The purpose of the maps is for NTIA to decide how much money every state will get,” Wallsten said, but “states are not obligated to use that map.”

The FCC opened its bulk challenge process for state, local and tribal governments and ISPs Monday (see 2209020041). It will start the challenge process and provide access to the broadband serviceable location fabric data to other entities at a later date, but how the commission defines third parties remains unclear, Wallsten said: “I would love to know the answer to that.”

It would be a “huge waste and lost opportunity” if states didn’t incorporate the new maps with their own data, Wallsten said. Requiring ISPs to submit their broadband availability data to be eligible to receive BEAD funding and participate in the challenge process was “a pretty good incentive” to ensure all providers submit their data, said FBA President-CEO Gary Bolton. States also have an incentive to “show that they have as much unserved area as possible” to receive as much funding as possible, Wallsten said, which “creates the potential for gaming.” The FCC will need to be “very rigorous about the challenge process to deal with that,” he said.

The FCC “is doing actually a really, really great job” on completing its new broadband maps, Wallsten said: “This is a hard project that Congress gave them and by all accounts they are working as hard as anyone could imagine.” Still, it "doesn't mean that it’s all going to go well,” he said, because “every data set has error in it” (see 2204060046).

The new maps “will have errors because it's always changing,” Wallsten said. The FCC’s challenge process is important and will need to continuously exist, he said, because “we’re trading in … disaggregation for accuracy.” The new data is more precise and will likely be better than the FCC’s Form 477 data because it will identify broadband availability at a single location, Wallsten said, but addressing errors is “going to be a very difficult and ongoing problem.”

NTIA’s recent release of an updated FAQ about the BEAD program also “provided some really useful information,” Bolton said. It “reinforced” that the high-cost threshold “needs to be really high” and prioritizes fiber, provided clarification on workforce requirements, and “confirmed that NTIA is going to wait on the FCC map challenges” before allocating funding, Bolton said.

Bolton applauded FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s “decisive decision” to deny Starlink’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction long-form application, saying it “saved 640,000 families from being redlined from the nation's current investment in critical infrastructure” (see 2209120044). They “would have been forever relegated to the wrong side of the digital divide,” he said: “We are confident the FCC will continue to hold the line and we support them 100% on their decision.” There should still be technological neutrality, Wallsten said, because “we don’t want the government to be taking all the risk.”