Christine Parker, Senior GIS Analyst at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, led the February National Broadband Mapping Coalition monthly call, covering for Coalition leader Dustin Loup who is on family leave. The call took place on February 28, 2024.
Christine opened with a call out to state broadband office representatives on BEAD challenges and other issues they face. Shubika Agarwal, who works with the Illinois Office of Broadband, reported that Illinois has started the BEAD challenge phase, while Ellie de Villiers of Maple Broadband responded that Vermont is about to start theirs. Kevin Sievert, formerly with North Dakota’s broadband office and now working at Calix to support broadband deployment across the country, raised the issue of inaccurate mapping data from ISPs. To help counter this, Melanie Wadsworth, GIS analyst at Oregon’s broadband office, commented that they are working with Oregon State University on a public-facing map.
These comments prompted Harold Feld of Public Knowledge to ask if there should be a push for the FCC to penalize ISPs that overstate their capacity. Several participants shared their experience with submitting complaints and seeing little response from the FCC, which raised questions about the FCC’s capacity to follow up and enforce existing rules. Diane Wells of Minnesota’s broadband office shared their efforts to shift the burden of proof regarding areas served to the ISPs, although NTIA has pushed back on this.
In response to comments regarding the difficulties in challenging FCC broadband maps, Jake Varn of the Pew Charitable Trusts shared a link to the challenge process explainer posted on the Pew website. Christine provided a link to the Broadband and Digital Equity Planning Support page on the Washington State University website, which includes a workbook on writing broadband and digital equity plans.
The next segment of the call featured a presentation by Nick Pappin of Washington State University, who is working with the state broadband office to expand Internet access there. Nick used plots of community anchor institution (CAI) location data drawn from Kansas, New York, and Ohio to demonstrate the variations in the quality of this information from state to state. He underscored the impact of this by noting that the reported locations of CAIs—ideally within 500 meters of the true location—may be off by as much as 75 kilometers. Recognizing the potential for significant errors, Nick encouraged users to double-check their data and verify CAI locations when mapping project areas.
As a final issue, Christine posed the question of residential locations having business-only service and thereby considered served. This appears to be a problem especially for multi-dwelling units (MDUs). It could be as simple as changing the designation of a location from business to residential, although internal provider systems may make this difficult to do.
The National Broadband Mapping Coalition monthly call series will continue with the next call scheduled for Wednesday, March 27.
