State Broadband Adoption Funding Lags Behind Buildout
States tend to fund broadband deployment more than they do adoption, said a state broadband report released Wednesday. The Rural Telecommunications Congress, a nonprofit headed by Drew Clark, commissioned broadband economists at the Strategic Networks Group to write the report.…
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About 52 percent of states have an office dedicated to broadband, and 28 percent have a budget to fund broadband initiatives, the report said. (The study included only 48 states because Rhode Island and New Jersey declined to participate.) While California has $330 million and New York has $500 million for broadband, the average funding for the 11 other funded states was $597,000 annually, the report found. States with broadband funding said they most often support “planning and support” activities (82 percent) and infrastructure (45 percent), the report said. SNG President Michael Curri said “investment activities seem to be heavily weighted towards the ‘supply’ of broadband and include mapping, infrastructure planning, and grants, surpassing economic development activities that impact economic advancement including raising awareness, training, and driving end-user utilization.” The report ranked New Mexico the highest on its broadband efforts, followed by Maine, Ohio, New York and Vermont. The worst-ranked five states were Indiana (44), Louisiana (45), Montana (46), Missouri (47) and Texas (48), it said. The ranking was based on five dimensions, SNG said. On availability, SNG said the top three states were New Mexico, Maine and Hawaii, with Montana in last place. On adoption, the top three states were New Hampshire, Hawaii and Oregon, with Alabama in last place. On how well states drove “meaningful use” of broadband by businesses and households, SNG found Ohio performed the best, Vermont and West Virginia were tied for second, and Tennessee did the worst. On growth investment, New York came in first, with Nevada and North Carolina tied for second, SNG said. SNG also considered regulatory environment, but didn’t rank the states within this specific metric.