The Texas BOOT Toolkit is laser-focused on the Texas Bringing Online Opportunities to Texas (BOOT) broadband grant program.
The first round of BOOT provides up to $120 million in funding to 9,785 eligible census blocks. It uses American Rescue Plan (ARPA) Capital Project Fund (CPF) dollars.
The Toolkit enables users to explore a wide range of metrics than enable a network planner / grant applicant to identify compelling opportunities and to avoid potential pitfalls.
It integrates vast national data resources with Texas BDO provided data. The KPIs include:
- All BOOT Eligible Blocks
- Pending challenges (some seeking to disqualify a block, some seeking to add a block)
- Successful Missing Location FCC Challenges (Type 1)
- Location density (locations per square kilometer) by block
- Unit density (units per square kilometer) by block
- Locations per block covered at 100-20 Mbps, low latency
- Locations per block covered at 25-3 Mbps, low latency
- The presence of each of the following technologies: fiber, cable, DSL/copper, licensed FWA, unlicensed FWA, and NGSO satellite.
- The depth of coverage (% of locations covered) of each of the following technologies: fiber, cable, DSL/copper, licensed FWA, unlicensed FWA, and NGSO satellite.
The Toolkit distinguishes between populated and unpopulated areas and shows the precise number of locations and units (think “homes passed”) within each populated block, based on FCC data.
The Toolkit heavily utilizes FCC Fabric / BDC data because it is complete (100% ISP participation) and available as a data set. The grant applicant will also need to access BDO map data (downloadable only in small pieces) in preparing a grant application.
Identifying eligible areas is a complex data-driven process. The Toolkit juxtaposes many of the layers of decision-making information that are available today.
The data sets include:
- Federal Programs: Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP), RDOF, CAF II, and USDA (ReConnect and others, current and pending), seen through the lens of the BEAD NOFO as “enforceable commitments”.
- USDA Metrics (Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE), Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), and various measures of rurality).
- Community Anchor Institutions (schools (k-12), libraries, medical / healthcare, public safety, universities / colleges / post-secondary, other / government, other / NGO)
- 911 / PSAP boundaries
- Opportunity Zones
- A collection of geographic boundaries, high resolution numerical data (visualized with a click of the mouse), streaming maps, and other tools.
Demographic and economic data is presented as visual and numerical heat maps:
- Population density
- Household density
- Housing unit density
- Income per capita
- Mean household income
- Median household income
- Poverty Line (reflecting HH size)
- Household Size
- SNAP Participation Rate
Take a few minutes to read the Introduction (a conceptual overview), the Getting Started Guide and the site License Agreement. You'll appreciate the insights the Toolkit can provide.
This product is delivered via a digital download.
