NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – As Gov. Bill Lee pushes for another $200 million to expand broadband access in Tennessee, an expert group said the state should first map out just where hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans without access to high-speed Internet live, so officials don’t have to rely on federal maps that overstate coverage in some communities.
A better map would use data from each address, instead of the federal maps’ reliance on census blocks that tend to be bigger in rural areas and are designated as “covered” when a single household can access high-speed Internet, regardless of whether others in the area are left without connections.
The Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations said in a report last month that Tennessee should join several states in seeking more precision and not waiting around for a rewrite of the federal maps, which is in the works but with no definitive timeline.
The report concluded that the Department of Economic and Community Development should follow the map-making lead of Georgia, which found that at least 255,000 homes and businesses “are at best only partially served,” even though their census blocks are listed as fully served by the Federal Communications Commission, which has relied on broadband providers for its maps.
Tennessee ranked 34th among states in broadband coverage, according to the FCC’s 2020 broadband deployment report, which relies on December 2018 data. There are still 432,627 Tennesseans living in census blocks where no provider reported the baseline broadband speeds as of December 2019, the report said.