As FSF Senior Fellow Andrew Long explained in his March 2022 Perspectives from FSF Scholars, "Overlapping Broadband appropriations Demand Agency Coordination: New FCC Maps Can Track Grants, Avert Waste," the forthcoming maps "can and should be leveraged to illustrate, based upon information provided by grant applicants, the precise locations that subsidies will target." In that Perspectives, Mr. Long calls for federal agency coordination and reliance on the Commission's forthcoming broadband maps as a way of ensuring program effectiveness and efficiency in awarding broadband subsidies. Great efforts ought to be made to ensure that tax dollars dedicated to expanding broadband access to unserved Americans be spent wisely spent for that purpose and not wasted on overbuilds in areas where Americans already have broadband access.
In her announcement of the progress being made on the broadband maps, Chairwoman Rosenworcel explained that the Commission has set up a process to ensure that the maps will reflect changes to network availability and yield more precise data over time. This important aspect of the maps also was made by Commissioner Nathan Simington during the discussion at the Free State Foundation's Fourteenth Annual Policy Conference, held in May of this year. For a recap of the discussion on broadband maps, see my June 22 blog post, "#FSFConf14 Panelists Offer Perspectives on Broadband Mapping."
UPDATE (09/07/22 – 1:50PM): NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson reportedly stated that federal subsidies pursuant to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program will not be allocated until the initial draft of the FCC's broadband map has gone through at least one full challenge process.
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