States Seen Playing Critical Role in Deciding Which Areas Get BEAD Funding

Much remains to be seen on what the mapping challenge process will look like as the broadband, equity, access and deployment program unfolds, speakers said during a Broadband Breakfast webcast Wednesday. The experts agreed the states play a critical role. The states get to propose to NTIA their methodology for determining eligibility for BEAD funding, said Tom Reid of Reid Consulting Group: “To me that’s the big, big issue.”

Some states are going to use the FCC broadband maps while others are proposing “significant alterations,” Reid said: “It is going to be very much state driven.”

Creating the state challenge process "was an acknowledgment that the FCC maps don’t go far enough,” said Dustin Loup, coordinator of the Broadband Mapping Coalition. “Accuracy issues aside,” the FCC maps “just don’t have the data that we need to truly understand the scope of broadband need at the state level,” he said: “The states really need to be focused, and the communities are a key part of that process.”

Hexvarium, which builds and operates broadband networks, sees keeping the focus on the consumer as the biggest challenge, said CEO Gerry Lawlor. Many companies are instead “focused on solving an engineering problem,” he said. Hexvarium starts with “rapid market analysis” and has analyzed how to provide fiber to every location in the U.S., he said. The next step is a more detailed analysis “which actually gets into trying to understand a given geography,” he said: “What do I need to build? What does the density look like? What types of consumers are there?”

The BEAD program is like “Swiss cheese,” Lawlor said. Providers will need to serve areas BEAD doesn’t cover “just to get to the areas that become BEAD eligible,” he said. “It’s that confusion” that providers “are going to struggle with” as BEAD unfolds, Lawlor said. Providers can’t build “fiber islands” and need to understand how to build out in less profitable areas to get to areas that will be covered, he said. Market analysis doesn’t stop when network construction starts, he said.

Having an accurate understanding of the needs for broadband is critical, not only for the BEAD program but also for covering gaps after the program ends, Loup said. Loup warned the mapping challenge process is “very prescriptive” and if not implemented properly could be “a distraction with limited results,” he said. A bad process would hurt efforts to implement BEAD on tight timelines, he said.

The mapping coalition is now working with Mississippi, Louisiana, Virginia and Kansas, states that are likely to put a challenge process in place first, Loup said. He sees a need to automate many of the verification steps broadband offices are required to take under BEAD: “Is the location in the fabric? Does the address match? Is the challenged service actually available? Is the data of the right date and age?”

“The good news is we do know how to find out what the truth is on the ground” on broadband, Reid said. Reid said “myths” remain. One myth is that people in rural America will subscribe only to low-speed offerings, he said. “In actuality, the demand for broadband in rural areas mirrors the rest of the country” and as many as a third of subscribers “will take the top speed offered to them,” he said.

Another myth is that bad testing is a result of bad Wi-Fi, which suggests in rural America “no one knows how to configure Wi-Fi,” Reid said. That’s “just pretty ridiculous,” he said. Reid cited a map covering part of rural Ohio, which showed little service two years ago. Charter received federal funds to provide service and now large parts are green on the map, showing a high level of broadband speeds, he said: “People are spending $100 a month to be able to get that green service level. It really shows that you can identify unserved areas, and you can identify progress.”