Helping Policymakers Maximize Broadband Funding

In recent years, policymakers have made closing the digital divide a policy priority, and made unprecedented investments in expanding broadband access and adoption across the US. The highest profile of these investments, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, makes over $40 billion available to states to reach currently unserved residents. In spite of this billions in funding, there are still concerns that some states will not have enough funding available to them to expand broadband access to every home and business.

In response to this concern, Vernonburg Group worked with a major ISP trade association to develop a tool that will help combat this concern, and demonstrate that, by setting a reasonable extremely-high cost threshold and incorporating the right mix of technologies, every state has enough funding available to achieve Internet for All. Vernonburg Group’s Broadband Funding Tool allows users to change a variety of settings and assumptions, including the match assumption, percent of funding reserved for CAIs and non-deployment activities, buried vs. aerial fiber, and other variables, in order to arrive at an optimal high-cost threshold. The tool also works in reverse, allowing users to set the high-cost threshold at varying levels and understand how that would affect a state’s ability to reach all its residents and businesses.