Accountability Starts With Showing Your Work

One of the things I used to get dinged on in school from time to time was failing to “show my work” in math class. I’d sometimes shortcut to an answer and lose points for it. If showing your work is necessary for math tests with no real-world implications, the same principle should apply when it comes to giving out billions of dollars for broadband. However, in this case, showing your work isn’t about how you got there. The goal of broadband funding isn’t to cut a ribbon on a fancy new network or to blast statistics about locations passed. If the billions of dollars given out for broadband are going to make a meaningful difference in Americans’ lives, deliver a solid return for American taxpayers and ratepayers, and give America a leg up on global competitiveness and productivity in an era when AI, telehealth, and precision agriculture needs are exploding, we need to focus on the locations served. This is why NTCA recently called for the public release of performance-testing data for BEAD-funded networks, on a provider-by-provider basis.