NTIA Seeks OMB Clearance for Voluntary Collection of Broadband Availability Data

The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration will submit to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for clearance a proposal for voluntary collection of broadband availability data. In the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, Congress directed NTIA to update the national broadband availability map in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission and the states. Congress directed NTIA to acquire and display available third-party data sets to the extent it is able to negotiate its inclusion to augment data from the FCC, other federal government agencies, state governments, and the private sector. NTIA has developed this voluntary collection of broadband availability data, at a more granular level than that available via current Federal programs (including the FCC Form 477 process). This data will be used to analyze and map broadband availability across the country, and particularly in rural areas, for the purposes of public policy-making and public investment analysis and decision-making. This information collection covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Island Areas of American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the United States Virgin Islands.

The data to be collected includes geographic information on service availability—such as address, address range, road centerline, land-parcel identification, or latitude/longitude— and corresponding broadband availability data (such as technology service type, upload, and download speed, etc.) Data in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) format that describe (a) wireless coverage areas based on a propagation model and (b) network infrastructure (such as fiber optic routes) is also responsive. The information collection will be administered through an online file transfer tool.

Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent within 30 days