The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has tried hard to generate excitement about Buy America requirements for the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband funding program, even enlisting US Vice President Kamala Harris in the process.
As the US sets out to get everyone connected to broadband, it’s about more than just making sure broadband is available everywhere.
We could theoretically reach 94% of the Unserved and Underserved locations nationally. We only miss 750,000 locations. The biggest misses by percentage are Iowa (61% of Unserved and Underserved), Idaho (66%), Illinois, Kansas, and California (all 71%), Minnesota (76%), and Colorado and Nebraska (about 80%). I find it helpful to think about this as a simple math problem: how far the money might go can be estimated by multiplying the number of locations that need service times the average cost to serve them. There are 11.9 million Unserved and Underserved locations nationally.
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In 2019, more than 44.9 million immigrants lived in the United States. One-third (14.8 million) were low income, meaning that their family’s income was below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. These immigrants face challenges including language barriers and lack of access to information. In 2019, approximately 46 percent of immigrants ages five and older (approximately 20 million people) were Limited English Proficient (LEP). Immigrants accounted for 81 percent of the country’s 25.5 million LEP individuals.
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