- The chief of staff for CostQuest will be speaking on a panel at next week's Broadband Nation Expo
- Rachelle Medalia will talk about how CostQuest is helping state broadband offices to create their BEAD biddable locations
- Sometimes that involves creating biddable locations that come in strange shapes
If you know CostQuest at all you probably think of it as the company that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hired to help the FCC clean up and refine its national broadband map. But the company is also working with state broadband offices on their Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) programs. And it sometimes helps them devise biddable areas that look a bit like a gerrymandered political district.
To give a little background, CostQuest works with the FCC on its national broadband map. But it was also hired, separately, by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to provide its mapping data so that NTIA can work with states on their BEAD mapping challenge processes. It hasn’t been decided whether the FCC and the NTIA mapping projects will ever be connected.
What many people may not know is that in addition to all its mapping work, CostQuest also provides NTIA with estimates on how much it will cost to bring broadband to each individual unserved location.
CostQuest has contracts with state broadband offices where it helps them to determine the best way to create biddable areas based on the price of deployment to each location. “What we basically do with states is we help them make sure they’re creating an efficient disbursement of government funds,” said Rachelle Medalia, chief of staff at CostQuest.
Medalia will be participating on a panel about broadband funding at next week’s Broadband Nation Expo in Washington, D.C., where she’ll talk about the company’s role in BEAD.
She said there are some areas that have been underserved because they have a negative business case. And sometimes there are areas nearby that have a good business case. CostQuest helps states to “gerrymander for good,” she said.
In other words, states can take CostQuest’s price-per-location data and combine locations to come up with a biddable area that provides a decent return on investment.
“We know where the locations are, and we know how much it will cost to invest in that location and the potential rate of return. With that information, we can gerrymander, clustering those locations,” she said.
This is important because service providers, of course, want to only bid on locations where they’ll get the best rate of return. But states have a different goal – they want to make sure that every home gets served. CostQuest can help create groupings that provide the maximum impact for government funds but also provide a good business case for sub-grantees.
The price-per-location information also gives state broadband offices a guideline for bids that come in. If CostQuest estimates an area should cost $10 million to deploy fiber, but bids come in at $1 million or $50 million, that raises a red flag about the astuteness of the bidders.
Fierce Network is gearing up for our big Broadband Nation Expo Oct. 9-11 in Washington, DC, where leaders in broadband will gather for the biggest national event to talk about BEAD. Don’t miss the opportunity to meet with your industry peers. Be sure to register here!