The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)  provides 17 million households up to $30 per month in subsidies to offset the cost of broadband. In Minnesota, 193,678 have signed up. Benton Institute for Broadband & Society has created a tool to help determine whether that number is good or not, based on how many people qualify – down to the zip code level…

The Benton Institute’s ACP Performance Tool is a resource for any community that wants to answer the question: “How are ACP sign-ups going?” To answer, search a 5-digit zip code on the tool’s website. The ACP Performance Tool returns results that show two important numbers for the zip code area: 1) how many households have signed up for ACP (from government data) and 2) the expected number of households enrolled (the output from a statistical model discussed more below).

The difference between actual ACP enrollment and expected enrollment is a measure of performance. The tool places the zip code area into one of five performance categories:

1. Highest: Where actual enrollments exceed expected enrollment by 40%
2. High: Where actual enrollments are between 10% and 39% greater than expected
3. Medium: Where actual enrollments fall between 9% and -9% of expectations
4. Low: Where actual enrollments are between -10% and -39% of expectations
5. Lowest: Where actual enrollments are below expected ones by 40% or less.