Congress has approved $4.7 billion to establish a Broadband Technology Opportunities Program to expand broadband services in under served areas. Of these funds, up to $350 million is designated to developing statewide broadband inventory maps.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the Commerce Department, is responsible for the mapping project, and details of their meetings over the past few months have been posted to their website. A few meetings have been held with companies that aim to provide mapping services, including Apex CoVantage and CostQuest.
Given the national scope of this effort, and the fact that many states have undertaken their own Internet mapping exercises, perhaps the most effective use of this mapping money would be to help seed the build-out of a Spatial Data Infrastructure that would coordinate state data into a federal repository. Giving the mapping money’s to the states would provide a win-win to both map this resource and to pave the way for federated data sharing between the states and federal entities.
A coordinated effort among the states to collect this data might be the most efficient, and state oversight would also preserve states’ rights. Texas is already working to preempt federal government mapping mandates, and involving the state in the mapping effort could ease this roadblock.
The mapping effort will have to be a rapid exercise in order for the collected information to influence how the funds will be spent, because there’s a deadline to spend the stimulus funds by September 10, 2010.
