Federal Broadband Funding Could Reach 94% of Unserved and Underserved Locations: Expert

Federal broadband funding could reach 94% of unserved and underserved locations nationwide, blogged Cloudflare Director-Network Strategy Mike Conlow Monday. The FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and recently adopted enhanced alternative connect America model program could reach 31% of the remaining digital divide, Conlow said, leaving 8.3 million locations that would need to be reached through NTIA's broadband, equity, access and deployment program (see 2308310047). "The two FCC programs are doing a tremendous amount to lower the number of locations that BEAD needs to fund, leaving more BEAD money for the remaining locations," he said. Conlow noted some states will still have "a lot of trouble" reaching all their unserved and underserved locations: It "behooves every state to incorporate ways of generating competition in their grant program."