SOMERSET  : VCTI, the broadband and network technology experts, today announced its Broadband Map Integrity service. The new offering is designed to help states, municipalities, schools and other interested parties to quickly and efficiently submit challenges to the recently-released FCC maps, the Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric (Fabric), that will inform the allocation of $42.5 billion in BEAD (Broadband Equity Access and Deployment) grants. Current estimates place map inaccuracies at around one-to-two percent, which could translate to three million underserved households being excluded from the final maps.

One fundamental challenge is the variability in how addresses are captured in the myriad of government systems, such as tax records, and within the FCC Fabric. Leveraging their expertise and suite of geospatial tools, the VCTI Broadband Map Integrity solution normalizes the addresses to map to the Fabric, and identifies missing and misclassified locations.

“While the new FCC Broadband Fabric maps are a huge step forward, the variance within a community can be enormous, depending on a host of factors.  In multiple rural school districts, we found that 25 percent of homes were missing from the FCC Fabric. That high level of exclusion can have a significant effect on a community’s ability to acquire desperately needed funding to upgrade, or even acquire, decent broadband service,” explained VCTI CEO Raj Singh.

In addition to state and local interest in the maps for BEAD funding, school districts across the country who have already applied for Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) applications now find themselves having to validate that the addresses included in their applications are classified as underserved in the maps. In many cases, the districts may need to provide evidence to challenge the errors and omissions in the maps.

Broadband Map Integrity is the latest addition to VCTI’s Broadband Service Provider Solutions Suite.  Other offerings include:

• Broadband Investment Optimization Service (BIO) uniquely combines market economic analysis, environmental and infrastructure assessment, and optimized network planning for FTTH, Fixed Wireless, Hybrid and legacy copper and coax, to help service providers prioritize infrastructure investment opportunities, accelerate time to revenue and maximize ROI.                                                        
• Broadband Grant Bid Acceleration Service leverages the BIO capability set to help broadband providers identify and partner with local, state, and federal governmental entities to expand high-speed broadband services to underserved and unserved communities, schools, and businesses, leveraging the myriad of programs made available at the Federal and State level.
• Broadband Infrastructure Investment Analytics for Private Equity Firms helps private investors identify the most lucrative telecommunications infrastructure investments.