Blueprints for BEAD: Use the FCC Map to Spot Trouble Areas for BEAD Challenges

FCC new map

Blueprints for BEAD is a series of short notes and analysis on nuances of BEAD that might otherwise get lost in the volume of material published on this federal funding program. Click the “Blueprints for BEAD” tag at the bottom of this story for other posts.

There are still almost two dozen states that have yet to go through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program challenge process, which will lock down those locations that will be eligible for federal broadband infrastructure funding. And one refrain we’ve heard over and over from those in states that have already completed theirs is that, despite NTIA’s best efforts, it's complicated and hard. 


States have been given significant leeway in setting the rules for developing a challenge process wherein unserved and underserved locations can be identified. Lacking clear direction from the NTIA for what may seem like insignificant details, the often-hastily developed rules have in many states resulted in opaque processes characterized by a lack of clear communication and outreach. The resulting state guidance on how to request a data license, navigate a challenge portal, and submit challenges has left many local governments, small ISPs, Tribes, and nonprofits feeling defeated about their ability to participate. Without the detailed counsel on strategies for identifying prospective challenges, the scale of impact that this group of eligible entities could have on BEAD outcomes has been significantly narrowed. 


This is particularly troubling because widening the circle of those who can effectively participate is important. Residents, local governments, and nonprofits often have the best sense of exactly where the connectivity gaps in their communities exist. They also know what form the digital divide takes - whether in reliability, or cost, or latency, or available speeds. But so far, the challenge process for BEAD has been dominated by the largest ISPs that have the staff and expertise to interact with large amounts of geographic data in a relatively short period of time.


Step in an unlikely tool to restore power to those who need it most: the national broadband map maintained by the Federal Communications Commission. We know, it surprises us too, having spent the year as we have pointing out its many fundamental flaws and inexplicable data protection clauses. But its national coverage and unrestricted use should allow those without data skills or technical expertise to use the federal broadband map for good. 


Simply go to the FCC’s broadband map, type in your location, and follow the breadcrumbs (i.e., availability challenges) to find the trouble spots in your community. You’ll want to ensure that the “Service Filters” at the top right are set to ‘Wired & Licensed Fixed Wireless’ under Technologies and ‘100/20’ under Speed (Mbps), which is NTIA’s definition of a reliable, high-speed Internet connection. In the left side of the page, click the sandwich button and toggle “Availability Challenges” on to make any FCC availability challenges visible in the map (see below).

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Challenge layers
Federal Communications Commission National Broadband Map


It’s as simple as that; use the FCC map to confirm areas where you suspect there are challengeable locations and highlight new areas. The type of evidence you’ll need to collect to create a valid challenge will depend on the challenge type and the state you’re in (reach out to the broadband office or you can find details in the state’s BEAD Initial Proposal Volume 1). If you’re a resident, then share the information you collect with an entity planning to submit challenges. If you’re an eligible entity, please reach out to your community to collect any available information and incorporate their challenges when submitting data to your state’s broadband office during the official challenge window. It will likely be slow and painstaking, but it’s better than not having any effective options to submit any challenges at all.


One significant caveat here is that using the FCC map to do work at any significant scale transports us back to square one in necessitating data wrangling expertise. The problem here is that the FCC doesn’t include census block IDs in the public-facing challenge data, so you have to join those data with the Broadband Data Collection to do any spatial analysis at scale. We asked the BDC help office why they don’t include census block IDs, and below was their helpful response:

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BDC
Federal Communications Commission helpline response to our question about why census block IDs are not included in the BDC data

Leaving the designing of the challenge processes up to each of the states was bound to result in a collection of good, bad, and ugly outcomes, but in working with communities over the last six months to understand why it’s important to participate and how to do so, we’ve been struck by the preponderance of the latter two, hampered further by a lack of guidance and persistent flaws underlying the FCC’s “new and improved’ national broadband map. In the absence of wide-scale solutions, communities are left to make use of the tools available.