So how do you leverage all that
federal broadband data?
Let's say you're in a small to mid-size county not conveniently strapped on to the side of a large metropolitan area. The big fat broadband pipe is not heading your way anytime soon. That means that the core population centers of your county might have access to, say, 7 mbps downstream. And large swaths of the county might have access to wireless. And some have no access at all.
Let's say, you live, for example, in place like
Buncombe County, North Carolina. So there's a substantial population (~210 thousand), the preponderance of which lives in or around the county seat.
What do you do?
Well, for starters, consider broadband availability relative to densities of population. Are there any obvious low-hanging fruit that providers have missed?
Not so lucky, usually. In many cases, the low-hanging fruit is long gone. That means that the areas left behind are recalcitrantly lagging.
Now it's time to take a close look at the broadband mapping data from
NTIA. A first question: the NTIA collects information on community anchor institutions (CAIs) since these are integral to both sustainable adoption and public computing center aspects of the BTOP program.
So how well connected are those anchor institutions?
Well, in the case of Buncombe County, most are in the Asheville ambit. So most CAIs have access to the broadband. But not all:
The place to start is triaging those institutions (while not accepting the NTIA determination of what is and isn't an anchor institution; update the NTIA list and make sure it is comprehensive). Which are connected? Which of the disconnected should be connected? Which of those could be easily connected? Making these determinations is the first step toward an actionable plan.
A couple glaring deficiencies exist in the NTIA data, of course. Most important, the data are aggregated to US Census blockgroups. That means that, especially in rural areas where this information is most relevant, the footprint of broadband is overstated. Making a location-based strategy is difficult when the location of the broadband footprint is uncertain.
But this is a good first step for framing the game plan.
What do you do?
Well, for starters, consider broadband availability relative to densities of population. Are there any obvious low-hanging fruit that providers have missed?
Not so lucky, usually. In many cases, the low-hanging fruit is long gone. That means that the areas left behind are recalcitrantly lagging.
Now it's time to take a close look at the broadband mapping data from NTIA. A first question: the NTIA collects information on community anchor institutions (CAIs) since these are integral to both sustainable adoption and public computing center aspects of the BTOP program.
So how well connected are those anchor institutions?
Well, in the case of Buncombe County, most are in the Asheville ambit. So most CAIs have access to the broadband. But not all:
The place to start is triaging those institutions (while not accepting the NTIA determination of what is and isn't an anchor institution; update the NTIA list and make sure it is comprehensive). Which are connected? Which of the disconnected should be connected? Which of those could be easily connected? Making these determinations is the first step toward an actionable plan.
A couple glaring deficiencies exist in the NTIA data, of course. Most important, the data are aggregated to US Census blockgroups. That means that, especially in rural areas where this information is most relevant, the footprint of broadband is overstated. Making a location-based strategy is difficult when the location of the broadband footprint is uncertain.
But this is a good first step for framing the game plan.
