Fiber Broadband Association Delivers Geospatial Fiber Planning Tools to Fiber Broadband Community

ORLANDO, FL – Today at Fiber Connect 2023, the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) announced a suite of Broadbandtoolkit.com geospatial planning tools for FBA members to visualize existing broadband deployments and areas of opportunity. Members can now access Fiber Finder, the Fiber Strategy Toolkit, and the National Hex Toolkit through FBA’s Research and Resources library to identify the current reach of broadband technologies, understand key differences in quality of service, find BEAD-eligible areas, and develop data-driven strategies to connect Americans that are unserved or underserved.

According to the FCC, more than 8.3 million U.S. homes and businesses lack access to high-speed broadband. To ensure all Americans can access the opportunities and economic benefits of high-quality broadband services, it is imperative that policymakers, investors, and broadband providers can visualize where fiber and other broadband technology deployments are present and understand the key differences in the quality of deployments.

“We are thrilled to provide our members with access to these geospatial tools so they can easily visualize opportunities for expansion, refine their deployment strategies, and connect more communities to high-quality fiber broadband,” said Deborah Kish, vice president of Research and Workforce Development at the Fiber Broadband Association. “As all types of broadband providers are preparing their initial BEAD proposals, this type of data is very timely and extremely valuable in assessing the regions where fiber broadband is needed most.”

The suite of geospatial planning tools enables members to visualize U.S. locations passed by fiber and other BEAD-eligible technologies, the performance and depth of fiber deployments, and where eligible unserved and underserved project areas exist. The three tools include the following:

Fiber Finder geospatial business planning solution enables broadband providers, manufacturers, state broadband offices, federal regulators, and others to see the extent of residential and business fiber deployments in the U.S. The solution leverages data from the May 2023 release of FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) and shows locations passed by holding company and by state or territory.

The Fiber Strategy Toolkit takes geospatial planning one step further to visualize the presence, performance, and depth of fiber deployments.

The National Hex Toolkit expands deployment visualization capabilities to all BEAD-eligible technologies, including fiber, cable, copper, and licensed fixed wireless terrestrial networks in the U.S. It includes BEAD compliance layers based on NTIA BEAD NOFO definitions and recent federal data sets.

These planning tools are the latest addition to a library of research and resources FBA offers its members. FBA recently launched The BEAD Threshold Cost Model with Cartesian, which helps state broadband offices accurately calculate their Extremely High Cost Per Location Threshold (ECHT) for BEAD-funded fiber broadband deployments.