Roughly 175,000 Arizona homes still lack access to broadband internet, and many of them are in tribal and rural communities; the state Commerce Authority says it’s looking to change that.
Sandip Bhowmick, VP of infrastructure and data, directs the agency’s dedicated broadband office, established just five years ago. He said the state is launching ConnectAllAz to make the efforts to expand access more transparent – even showing details down to which specific addresses benefit from grants and what stage of the process they’re in.
“Every single household, regardless of their location .... it's in the Havasupai Tribe, underneath the Grand Canyon, or it's in Maricopa County,” Bhowmick said. “It's all accounted for, and they're all getting some kind of connectivity.”
The goal, Bhowmick said, is for all Arizona homes to be connected by the end of 2030.
The newly-launched ConnectAllAz website features an interactive map for officials to track which areas need the most attention. And because it’s publicly accessible, he added, “residents can type their address. They can see when we went through the grant, who got the grant in their area, which ISP is deploying and which phase we are in right now.”
Bhowmick said that despite challenges like geography and lacking infrastructure, total state-wide access remains the goal.
