Policy changes, technology limitations and problems in mapping data will all, in some way, limit the nation’s ability to bring broadband to rural America, industry watchers said.
The states that have invested in standing up broadband offices with highly qualified technical expertise and the administrative heft to develop strong public policy will likely be more successful at closing the digital divide, consultants said.
New grant rules for the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program which allow for low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology to be considered — and grant rules where states are required to make their BEAD grants available to all broadband technologies as a form of price shopping — are setting the stage for millions of rural homes to have the appearance of being served by broadband, when in fact, they could be badly served or go without. (Examples of LEO tech include the Elon Musk-owned Starlink.)
“Post-BEAD, there are going to be millions of households that will remain unserved and underserved. And really, in my mind, it’s a bipartisan betrayal of rural America,” Tom Reid, president and founder of Reid Consulting Group, which partners with states and counties in broadband consulting, said during a Sept. 24 panel for Broadband Breakfast, a news and policy organization focused on broadband technology. “It’s just a really stunning failure of public policy.”
Nationwide, 40 to 60 percent of locations “that should be eligible for BEAD are being gaslighted” about its coverage potential, Reid said. LEO limitations include decreased effectiveness in areas with topography or tree coverage; it can have difficulty penetrating leaf cover and surmounting steep terrain.
Both the Biden and the Trump administrations have made it difficult to challenge the FCC maps with more accurate broadband coverage data, Reid said, indicating mapping data was consistently, deeply “slanted toward the [Internet service providers] ISPs, giving them another opportunity to claim service in areas that are in fact not served.”
“I really think, at the end of all of this, after BEAD is finally awarded, we’re still going to have millions of locations that were missed,” Doug Dawson, president of CCG Consulting, a telecommunications consulting firm, said during the panel. The reasons, he said, are many, starting with mapping data that offers an often inaccurate picture of unserved and underserved locations.
They use a “trust, but never verify, approach to mapping,” Reid said.
“We frequently see fixed-wireless providers claiming total coverage within a fixed radius of their towers,” Reid explained in a follow-up email. “We know it is not true, they know it is not true and the FCC knows it is not true.” And successfully challenging a claim only reflects the lack of coverage at an individual address — not the surrounding area that may also be impacted.
The $42.5 billion federal BEAD program was a widely supported component of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. It is administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The second Trump administration revamped key components of the Biden-era program, downplaying or eliminating certain provisions like the preference for fiber infrastructure, and the kinds of equity programs that would help to bring broadband service into the homes of often economically disadvantaged residents.
Reid pointed to an area in western North Carolina, in Cherokee County, where Internet speed test data shows “a few pockets of good service, but otherwise, pretty bad service.” Internet service providers, he said, claim ample coverage in the county, disqualifying the areas from BEAD funding. The few locations still eligible for the BEAD “were all awarded to low-earth orbit satellite [service].”
New broadband infrastructure in North Carolina funded via the American Rescue Plan Act tends to be projects installing fiber, which is more reliably fast and dependable compared to other technologies like fixed wireless or LEO. And the state does conduct “onsite technical site visits” to test the level of service, Angie Bailey, director of the Broadband Infrastructure Office at the North Carolina Department of Information Technology, said.
“I think as we have more and more of our projects completed, and move into BEAD, that’s a huge piece,” she said.
North Carolina has questioned the federal maps, submitting about 40,000 “fabric challenges” in the last two years, Bailey said. The fabric refers to the Internet serviceable locations.
“Those locations themselves are still being refined. And so we’ve spent a lot of time on fabric challenges. We’ve gotten about 23,000 of those approved over the last couple of years,” she said. “And that’s really important work to us. We have a really strong mapping team. Our state has the Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, which is part of our Department of IT.” About 5,000 locations are still pending approval.
Minnesota has been involved with state-led broadband infrastructure for about the last dozen years, Bree Maki, executive director of the Office of Broadband Development, said — and this includes broadband mapping.
“Every time we do a state-funded project, we go out and we’re checking every location we’re funding and doing speed tests before we make any final payment. We’re seeing the locations. We’re seeing that they exist, and so then we update those maps,” Maki said. But data on the FCC-provided maps used in the BEAD program was “not necessarily what we get from our vendor.”
Some broadband offices, Dawson said, “are pushing the envelope; and some of them completely gave in to the NTIA rules.”
States and the federal government have long recognized the essential need to expand fast, reliable Internet into rural America, efforts that have often come up short, industry and public-sector observers said. And if BEAD fails to close the digital divide gap, Reid said, rural America will pay the price.
“I just really ask everybody to really realize what rural Americans are facing. In many cases, they don’t have broadband. They don’t have mobile service. And now the FCC has allowed copper abandonment without any notification,” Reid said, referring to the commission’s moves to smooth the process for retiring copper lines. “We are literally stranding millions of Americans in the 1930s, in terms of communications perspective. And to me, that’s just unconscionable.”