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The New York Times broke this open in February, in an article "Why Spend $350M to Map Broadband?"

"Congress, as well as the regulators who will carry out the new law, should look carefully to see if the reluctance of the cable and phone companies to provide customer data will slow down these efforts or make them more expensive." If the companies provide the data, mapping is a straightforward exercise and not terribly expensive. But the U.S. Telecom Association and the CTIA wireless group are throwing roadbalocks in the way, potentially forcing a massive wasgte of public money.

The $250-$350M that Congressmen thought they were voting on for "mapping" was always a deceit. A telco-supported group, Connected Nation, had an ambitious plan to "stimulate broadband demand" by paying an army of bureaucrats to explain to poor and old people why broadband would be good for them, and they persuaded Congress to fund that as "mapping." Unfortunately, Connect Kentucky's demonstration failed, with the "demand stimulus" efforts proving worse than useless according to their own data. The states love having the money to spend creating well-paid quasi-government jobs, so it will be hard to stop the waste.

Minnesota paid $163K to map a state of 5M people, Diane Wells emails. Extrapolating that to the 304M U.S. population, the cost to map the country would be under $10M. ($163 982 * (304 059 724 / 5 220 393)) = $9,551,066.68. The reality is not nearly as precise as the arithmetic, but the pros tell me even $25M would be a great deal to spend.

Cliff Stearns sensibly suggests the U.S. first fund areas that have been mapped and we know need upgrades. California and Vermont love the idea because they already have maps. New York and others are presumably dead set against it, because we don't. Fortunately, two of the leading contenders to create the maps both tell me they can have a decent “first iteration” before most major funding decisions are made.

Jim Stegman of Costquest, who provided an excellent map of Wyoming, tells me he typically can produce a useful map in 2-3 months after the providers give him the data requested. Another mapping outfit, Connected Nation, was able to do Minnesota, a large state, in just 4 months. Getting the data to the mappers often is the major bottleneck.

Congressman Stearns testified “By identifying the areas that currently lack broadband service, the agencies will be better equipped to make decisions on how to best spend taxpayer money. The likelihood of waste, fraud, and abuse increases if we act before having the benefit of this information. A 'ready, fire, aim' approach could be devastating.” I believe this can also help to ensure that requests are well thought out, and provide a valuable incentive to complete maps in the remaining states as thoroughly and quickly as possible.

Stegman has some nice samples of what's possible when demographics are sensibly added. I remember BellSouth discovered that families with children are more likely to take broadband so they expected a higher take rate in neighborhoods with kids. Overlaying income, family size, etc. can point out “unserved” areas that need larger or smaller subsidies to make them commercially attractive. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/exparte/MappingNTIA_March112009_LinkAmerica.pdf slides 10 and 11.

Earlier, I wrote this related item

Mapping U.S. broadband can be accomplished in a month or three with decent accuracy, and is the obvious first step for the NTIA, starting yesterday. CN did the Minnesota map in less than four months, and several competitors tell me they could do a map in weeks if the companies provided the data. Less than an hour with the much improved new Connect Kentucky maps located several areas where more coverage is needed, such as Breathitt and neighboring counties. Breathitt is in the highlands with a median income for a family of $23,721, very low for the U.S. About 28.10% of families and 33.20% of the population were below the poverty line. (Wikipedia data) There's another cluster not far from Pendleton and a third around the extremely poor Martin County. If only “demand stimulus” had such clear data, but nearly everything – other than bringing down prices – just hasn't shown strong results. Most is a waste of public money.