Thanks to Amalia Deloney for passing on to me the “Prepared Testimony of Connected Nation Chairman and CEO Brian R. Mefford, United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet “Oversight of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”
Thursday, April 2, 2009.“

They promote the Connected Nation model of mapping, which is a public private partnership. Critics would say it’s too private. They also promote their model for promoting broadband expansion. They also include a policy brief focusing on connecting minority Americans, which are too often on a wrong side of the digital divide.

They mention their work in Minnesota to illustrate the importance of mapping. I think/hope I have extracted enough to give context:

Plenty of evidence exists to justify why Congress called for household level mapping in the Broadband Data Improvement Act. This household level is the only way to truly understand where the broadband gaps exist, particularly in rural areas. If broadband mapping is done at any higher level – at a geographic unit level such as Census units or postal codes such as nine-digit zip – the result will be a severe overestimation of broadband deployment across the United States.

For example, Connect Minnesota has found, through a detailed and granular method of broadband mapping at the household level, that broadband is available to 94% of Minnesota households. If Minnesota’s broadband service availability were mapped at the level of census block groups, broadband deployment would be grossly overstated at 99.6%. Even at the most granular census block level, Minnesota would appear to have 96.4% broadband deployment – again, compared to Connect Minnesota’s household level mapping which shows 94% availability. Even going down to the census block level, this type of general mapping would assume that nearly 45,000 Minnesota households
are served when they are in fact unserved. Even worse, if Minnesota’s broadband deployment were mapped in terms of nine-digit zip codes, the process would become substantially more laborious and complicated, and even less accurate, since zip codes at any level are postal codes and not geographic units.

The result of inaccurate and overstated broadband maps would be an inaccurate baseline for broadband deployment as well as inaccurate benchmarks when Congress tries to evaluate the progress and impact of the whole of the broadband stimulus funding.