Federal officials are asking for Arkansas residents’ help identifying which parts of the state still lack access to high-speed internet.
Arkansas is receiving more than $1 billion from the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program, administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Evan Feinman, director of the BEAD program, says the state first needs to identify which areas are currently lacking access.
“Every single home and business is on a map the [Federal Communications Commission] publishes. And the FCC’s map shows whether those homes and businesses have broadband service, or don’t. The problem is, that map’s not always accurate,” he said. “What we’re doing… is offering folks the opportunity to challenge that map and make sure their home or business is properly categorized.”
The state will soon enter the “challenge process” of the BEAD program, where city governments, nonprofits and internet service providers will identify potential gaps in broadband service not already known to the federal government. Feinman says municipal governments, nonprofits and internet service providers will be able to dispute the FCC’s broadband coverage map through the challenge process.
“Once we know where we need service, the state will go to the private sector and say, ‘Here’s the amount of money we have, we need y’all to come in and build these networks. Tell us where you want to build, where you won’t,’” Feinman said. “The state will have to problem-solve for the areas that didn’t get bids, and then they’ll turn into us that list.”
Feinman says the goal is to offset some of the upfront costs of building broadband infrastructure, and to make investment in rural areas more attractive to internet service providers.
“It costs about the same amount of money to string a mile of fiber in downtown Little Rock as it does to string a mile of fiber way out in very less dense, rural areas. The problem is, that mile of fiber in Little Rock is going to get you a bunch of customers and revenue, and that mile of fiber out in rural parts of the state doesn’t. And at some point, it costs more to build the fiber than you’re going to get back from customers.”
Feinman says Arkansas will begin accepting bids for broadband infrastructure projects after the challenge process is complete. It’s estimated more than 215,000 homes and businesses in Arkansas currently lack access to high-speed internet.
The BEAD program, created by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is dedicating roughly $42.5 billion in federal funds to improving high-speed internet access nationwide.
