Community Needs and Goals

First things first. What does your community want to accomplish and who will receive services?

Determine your community’s connectivity needs.

Determine who will receive the service and benefit in your community.

Common metrics for broadband planning include the number of households, businesses and/or anchor institutions to be served by the proposed project.

Determine existing demand for broadband and projected growth of demand in your community.

Inventory the assets that are readily available and obtainable in your community.

What are the inventory contributions?

Identify:

Towers, high structures, rights of way, ongoing or pending capital projects, municipally owned utilities and existing vendor relationships.
Eligible internet service providers in your area.
Current broadband services and infrastructure.
The closest middle mile project.
(Middle mile refers to the network between local access and the destination network.)

Determine what speeds are available in different parts of the community.

Check the broadband coverage map. This is vital for determining which areas are eligible for funding under different programs.

How much speed do you need?
Internet speed	Works for
0–5 Mbps	Checking email Streaming music on one device Searching the Internet
5–40 Mbps	Streaming video on one device Video calling Online gaming for one player
40–100 Mbps	Streaming HD video on a few devices Multiplayer online gaming Downloading large files
100–500 Mbps	Streaming video in UHD on multiple screens Downloading files quickly Gaming online for multiple players
500–1,000+ Mbps	Doing a lot of almost anything on numerous devices simultaneously

As communities develop broadband plans, they should consider and include the following data:

Project area
Project technology type(s): fiber, coaxial cable, terrestrial fixed wireless, etc.
Total distance of planned wireline
Total number of locations to be served:
- Number receiving 25/3 megabits per second (Mbps) or below
- Number receiving between 25/3 Mbps and 100/20 Mbps
Latitude/longitude at each structure where service will be installed
Location type of each structure to be served
- Residential (If residential, number of housing units)
- Business
- Community anchor institution
Total project cost
Cost per location for the project, and how this was calculated
Speed and latency at each location after completion
- Maximum download speed offered
- Maximum download speed delivered
- Maximum upload speed offered
- Maximum upload speed delivered

If your question is not addressed here, Email us.

How much speed do you need?