Households across Kansas and Missouri struggle to access high quality internet. There are many barriers to broadband access, including a lack of providers in the area, unaffordable plans, poor speeds, unreliable connections, and restrictive data caps.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, the federal government decided to make over $42 billion dollars available to fund the construction of broadband infrastructure in areas that lack access to high-speed internet.

KC Digital Drive is working to ensure that no households misses out on this opportunity to receive funding for better broadband infrastructure.

Our current priority is ensuring that the FCC’s map of broadband availability is accurate. States are using this map to determine where to prioritize grant funding. Locations on this map where no provider claims to offer an internet plan with speeds of at least 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload will be eligible for funding under upcoming grants. However, in some cases the information currently recorded on the map may be incorrect, and households may not actually be able to access the speeds that providers claim they provide. These households are at risk of missing out on the opportunity to have the government help fund an internet provider to build out its network to their home.

In order to remedy this, Kansas and Missouri are running a challenge process to allow nonprofits and local governments to dispute this map wherever they have evidence that it is inaccurate. This evidence can include speed tests showing that the provider is not delivering speeds of at least 100/20 Mbps, screenshots of a provider’s website showing that they do not actually offer service to a particular household, evidence from internet bills showing data caps below 600 GB/month, and more.

If you believe your household’s internet situation is not accurately represented when you look up your address on the FCC’s maps, or if you just generally have issues with the quality of service you are receiving, please fill out our form so that we can track what areas in the metro are experiencing issues, and potentially submit challenges to Kansas or Missouri to ensure that your household and your surrounding neighborhood is eligible for broadband funding. If you live in Missouri, you can look up your status and submit information to the Missouri Broadband Office directly at this link.

If your household is eligible for a challenge, in some cases KC Digital Drive may be able to submit that challenge on your behalf without any additional input from you. In other cases KC Digital Drive may reach out to you if we need additional information for the challenge, such as if you would like to file a challenge based on your speed test results.