We’ve spoken with Glenn Fishbine about mapping in the past. He is now with Breaking Point Solutions doing the same work. He and his colleague, Nancy DeGidio, along with community broadband Champion Barbara Droher Kline, joined me for a chat and demonstration about how maps can change the way we think of BEAD. (Broadband Equity Access and Deployment is the $650 million of federal funds coming into Minnesota for broadband deployment.) I was glad to have Barbara join because she’s a practitioner of broadband development and had some great practical question.

The maps are proprietary but getting the overview really helped me better understand opportunities we might have with BEAD. For example, providers can find areas that qualify for BEAD funding and are adjacent or near areas they already serve – or maybe areas in their exiting footprint. Communities can find out what areas will qualify for BEAD funding – those are areas where more than 80 percent are not unserved or underserved. You can also see areas that are un/underserved but not at the same percentage. (Because you’ll want those homes to get service too.) You can see who serves these areas or provides service nearby. You can even find areas that have not been counted in BEAD (served and unserved) and area where you may believe connectivity has been overestimated. In either case, that might spur a challenge to the FCC.

Glenn did a quick scan of how much it would cost to serve the areas that had 80 percent of more of un/underserved households and found that if that was the only qualifier for BEAD funding, Minnesota might be in danger of leaving $100 million of the $650 million on the table and households left unserved.