Pursuant to FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(ii)(A)&(B), the Department of Commerce (DOC)/Enterprise Services intends to negotiate a sole source, firm fixed price contract with CostQuest Associates for Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric, Technology Availability Likelihood (TAL), and Network Cost Model data to meet the congressional mandate at the estimated price of $49.9 Million. This procurement will provide data to support operational needs for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD), Digital Equity (DE), the Access Broadband Act, as well as the Internet for All initiative. Several use cases that National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA), Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth (OICG) plans to use the data for include:

• Identification and use of un and under Served Broadband Serviceable locations as identified by the FCC for the use in the BEAD program


• Defining high-cost areas to support OICG efforts to develop an allocation model for its BEAD program and to support Eligible Entities use in their grant programs


• Defining extremely high-cost areas to support Eligible Entity grant programs


• Data consistency with the dataset used by the FCC in the Broadband Data Collection


• Supporting OICG efforts to review and assess eligible entities’ build out proposals


• Enabling Eligible Entities to define project areas based on underserved and unserved locations and cost to deploy broadband


• Reporting and tracking of projects during deployment


• Supporting interagency Federal and state coordination to avoid duplication/overbuild of broadband deployment and funding


• Evaluating the impact of broadband deployment (e.g., change in broadband availability)

CostQuest Associates (CQA) is uniquely positioned as the only entity capable of providing the standard location information, broadband availability information, and estimated cost to implement broadband as a single, linked source. As background, CQA was awarded the FCC’s contract to license the National Fabric to the FCC. The Fabric is CQA’s proprietary dataset and represents all BSLs in the country. The Fabric, which CQA licenses to the FCC, serves as the as the basis of the FCC’s BDC effort. CQA also licenses and distributes the Fabric to all participants in the BDC program. Every 6 months, the FCC will identify, by CQA Location_ID (a unique CQA generated identification of each BSL), which BSLs are unserved and underserved. For parties to use this BDC information at the standard location level, they must license CQA’s Fabric. In regard to estimated cost to implement broadband, the FCC selected CQA to implement the Connect America Cost Model (CACM) using CQAs proprietary CostPro model. The CACM is a CQA owned software and data product that interested parties may license. The CACM was vetted by the FCC, adopted in an FCC Order, and is still used by the FCC today. Internally, CQA maintains this model by routinely updating the underlying location data that the broadband network is required at, the engineering specifications used to design a fiber to the premise network, and the cost of material and labor to identify the cost to implement. The latest iterations of the CQA’s internal CACM are based on CQA’s National Fabric. As such, the current output of the model provides the estimated cost to implement broadband of every BSL location in the country. In regard to broadband availability information, it is expected that the FCC will provide this information to NTIA on a periodic basis as the BDC is updated. However, given the timeframe and quality for initial BDC delivery is in flux, NTIA will likely need access to estimated broadband availability information at the location level before BDC is ready and acceptable. CQA has developed a proprietary Technology Availability Likelihood (TAL) model based upon its National Fabric and network costs datasets. The output of the TAL model is a licensed data product. This TAL data estimates the availability of land based broadband technologies for every BSL location and forms the basis of estimating broadband availability information at the location level. Given CQA’s unique role of licensing the National Fabric to the FCC, developing estimated deployment costs for each Fabric location consistent with the FCC’s CACM model, estimating broadband availability information at the location level, and maintaining the sole ownership of the Fabric, Cost, and TAL datasets, CostQuest is the only firm that can meet the OICG’s requirement to provide standard location information, broadband availability information, and estimated costs to implement broadband all linked to the FCC BDC effort.

The intent of this notice is not to request competitive proposals, and any information received from interested parties will only be considered solely for determining whether a competitive procurement should be conducted. However, interested parties may submit a description of their firm's capabilities for satisfying this requirement, which demonstrates they possess the ability to successfully perform this effort. The responses must be received no later than

October 26, 2022, at 5:00 PM EST. All questions concerning this matter should be addressed directly to Courtney Palmer via email at cpalmer@doc.gov.