One of the big issues bedeviling states is the availability of accurate and precise data on who either does or doesn’t have broadband connectivity. The Federal Communications Commission’s census tract map methodology for determining who does and doesn’t have connectivity has long been criticized for inaccuracy, driving states to form partnerships with parties who can help generate more accurate and advanced service data.

“Our broadband availability map is one of the very few location-level maps that has a view where you can see from the public side where service lacks in certain communities,” said Josh Hildebrandt, Director of Broadband Initiatives, Georgia Technology Authority. “It has really helped Georgia be able to move forward very quickly in deploying different federal funds and it is primed to deploy a couple of state funds as well.”

Georgia stood up its state broadband office in 2018, making better mapping the cornerstone of its efforts to identify unserved communities and best apply available state and federal funding to close the digital divide. Its location-based broadband availability mapping efforts have been recognized by the National Governors Association (NGA) as a best practice.

FCC census tract identification of unserved locations has resulted in situations where one or a few people may have high-speed broadband access but the majority of the population in the arbitrarily defined area do not. “On what we call our ‘red dot’ map, the dots are unserved, plotted locations with latitude/longitude of physical addresses in our state. You can scroll down pretty close, all the way down to ground level,” Hildebrandt said. “We blot out right at the end for privacy purposes but you can see where the roads are, you know where these locations are and you can very easily see which locations we deem as being unserved. That’s fantastic for planning purposes and has really helped our providers and communities in Georgia to be as detailed as they can in their efforts.”

Having pinpoint data enabled stakeholders to provide extremely accurate proposals for delivering broadband to unserved households and communities, especially since Georgia can examine an FCC census block and determine the percentage of locations that have service. The state has set two standards beyond the FCC’s rules for adequately served areas: Delivery of broadband via terrestrial networks and at least 80 percent of the locations have broadband access in the census block area.

“Even in certain census blocks at 80%, we know there’s still unserved locations,” Hildebrandt stated. “We plot those so they don’t get left behind. We don’t want communities to be redlined because there’s one or two people with satellite dishes in their census block… Georgia is well positioned with its location level map to challenge and make sure the FCC map is as accurate as possible. We will be moving quickly when NTIA BEAD funds are available.”

Georgia’s best-practice mapping has landed it big dollars. Over the past 18 months, the state has been awarded $408 million in preliminary ARPA state recovery funds and another $326 million in FCC RDOF funding to deliver broadband to 179,000 currently unserved locations. In addition, Georgia is looking at deploying $25 million of its own funding.

Listen to the latest Fiber for Breakfast podcast with Josh Hildebrandt to learn more about how better mapping has delivered faster broadband funding for Georgia.