Bill Price, vice president of government solutions at LightBox, and Program Manager William Bogetti gave updates at Tuesday’s Broadband Development Office’s (BDO) advisory board meeting.
The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts (CPA) since November 2020 has supported the BDO, established under House Bill 5 during the 87th Legislature. The office is charged with creating an accurate broadband map, awarding grants and monies, setting the threshold speed for broadband, providing community outreach and addressing barriers to expansion.
LightBox was selected in August to provide mapping services after a search by the CPA. The company is 25 years old and based in California.
Mapping is required for states to apply for and receive Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funding via the National Telecommunications and Information Adminstration (NTIA).
“LightBox will begin processing ... geocoding to receive data linking to location fabric, provide feedback to the ISPs and then promote all that data to the map experiences that I’ll be talking about,” Bogetti told attendees. “The location fabric is already leveraged by some of the world’s leading technology, telco and real estate companies for use in their consumer-facing mapping applications with reliable search and direction applications and infrastructure buildouts.
“Precision location intelligence is critical to the development of accurate granular maps that will meet the needs of Texas.”
LightBox has completed Phase 1, collecting data from ISPs about service locations, Bogetti said. Map publication is expected in January and will include interfaces for three groups of users.
Residents will “be able to search and identify their address, click on their address, see a pop-up window, identify the information that is present … seeing the service levels that we’re reporting,” he said. “The map will be public to everybody in the state of Texas, and there will be no authentication or login required.”
ISPs and “state or government entities that will be submitting application data to the state of Texas to receive funding” will need logon credentials. “The purpose of the provider map is to (give) applicants a mechanism to visualize and download subsets of eligible locations. ... They’ll be able to take a lasso tool, select the area of locations that they’re interested in applying for and download those locations ... and attach that to their application when submitting it to CPA and BDO for funding.”
The third level is a “full-level map experience” for state decision-makers such as the CPA and BDO.
“This map is secure, only for state officials,” Bogetti said. It is for “Texas employees to confirm and validate grant applications and ensure that the applications received are for valid areas eligible to be funded.” All data will be visible to state officials in part to secure the grants process.
Price related that the company collected a list of communication services providers who report to the FCC and that some 350 were identified as those providing Internet services. About 133 ISPs responded by last week’s deadline, and the company will follow up with others.
Providers were asked if they provided Internet services of at least 25/3Mbps; however, the state is looking for Texans to connect at 100/10Mbps, which is considered future-proof by most stakeholders if not the federal government.
The mapping process includes:
- Phase 1: Engaging ISPs and collecting data.
- Phase 2: Match served locations to broadband fabric.
- Phase 3: Classify locations (businesses, homes, anchor institutions and others).
- Phase 4: Data set creation to show broadband coverage.
- Phase 5: Map creation.
State Comptroller Glenn Hegar was present, as was BDO Director Greg Conte, who answered multiple questions during the 90-minute meeting.
The BDO sends decisions and grant rules to the Texas Register for publication.
