BROADBAND

Amesville_Overview

Let Us Propel Your Project Forward

With over $300 million in funding won for clients, Reid Consulting Group knows what it takes to bring broadband to unserved and underserved regions. We employ and partner with diverse industry experts to generate insights, create actionable plans, and identify funding sources. From strategic planning and project management to multi-million dollar infrastructure deployments, we devote the same attention and level of expertise to each project.

Reid Consulting Group’s broadband reality mapping expertise can help identify service gaps and prioritize project areas. Our independently sourced, statistically valid, easy-to-understand analyses can help minimize the effects of lobbying and ensure that ISPs meet their subsidized deployment obligations.

Broadband improvements have been constrained for decades by unverified carrier statements that exaggerate availability and limit access to funding.

Achieving Accountability in Broadband
1BillionIN PROJECT VALUE

Our portfolio of work includes projects exceeding 1.6 billion dollars in project value across 18 states.

6000MilesOF FIBER PROJECTS COMPLETED
330MillionIN SECURED GRANTS

Our team has secured funding, compliance monitored and managed projects totaling $330 million for our clients.

The State of Broadband

Since 1990, the FCC has spent over $100 billion to improve rural telecommunications infrastructure – enough funding to install fiber-to-the-home in all but the most remote “frontier” areas.

Yet lack of adequate broadband continues to constrain both rural and urban prosperity.

With over $60 billion in new funding for broadband expansion in the next few years, we must address accountability. Without an independent way to verify broadband deployments, the lived experience of many Americans is unlikely to change.

Mapping

Mapping the Broadband Landscape

The FCC continues to accept claims by ISPs of “advertised speeds” with little or no verification. The result is a coverage map that does not reflect the lived experience of many Americans. Consumers can challenge these claims, however, but such challenges loop back to the ISPs for resolution, with no independent fact-checking.

Telecommunications carriers and cable companies – the ISPs – have tremendous influence in statehouses across the country, in the US Congress, and at the FCC.  Their persistent lobbying pressure is at least partly responsible for both the lack of progress in rural broadband and the lack of accurate data from the FCC.  Independent, on-the-ground performance and availability verification is essential if all households are to be served in fact as well as in claim. 

Reid Consulting Group’s broadband reality mapping expertise can help identify service gaps and prioritize project areas. Our independently sourced, statistically valid, easy-to-understand analyses can help minimize the effects of lobbying and ensure that ISPs meet their subsidized deployment obligations.

Our services

What's the Solution?

While the FCC maps are skewed, there is a way to reveal the
“truth-on-the-ground”. 

Using a scientifically valid process, RCG layers multiple data sources and data points to analyze the broadband landscape for our clients. The resulting maps can help prioritize project areas and drive discussions with stakeholders to move your broadband agenda forward.

RCG’s mapping process utilizes multiple public data sources and one proprietary data source from Ookla.  

We also can integrate custom data from clients and/or ISPs in the service area, when such data is available (e.g. maps of existing fiber networks).

The result is thousands of data points aggregated into a visual representation of the performance of broadband networks. 

Our projects

FCC Maps

The FCC’s new maps make it look like a significant portion of the populated landscape is receiving speeds above 100/20 Mbps. This “stated” coverage stands in stark contrast to the lived experience of many Americans. In the case studies below he image on the right represents the FCC form 477 data, this is the data that is being used to determine the level of funding necessary to address the digital divide. The image on the left illustrates a truer picture of the region, based on independent consumer tests.

CASE STUDY

Ohio

CASE STUDY

Rhode Island

CASE STUDY

Missouri