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The South-Central Alabama Broadband Cooperative District (SCABCD) recently received funding of $820,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to provide technical assistance to various communities within the Black Belt.

Managing director Aaron McCall of the SCABCD said the funding will particularly help more remote areas of the BlackBelt, not necessarily the major cities.

“We’ve got 45 communities and particular counties within the Black Belt that we are providing services for,” McCall said. “We’re going to be doing a closer look at the disparities and the digital divide within those communities, what those communities are and why they are not being served.”

McCall said the communities that the USDA looks upon as being underserved are Selma, Sardis, Selmont-West, Tyler and Valley Grande.

“Both broadband speeds that they have out there, according to the USDA broadband map, as well as the FCC broadband maps, are showing that some of those areas may or may not have already received some funding to have broadband installed,” said McCall. “Our job is going to be to go in, verify and validate those maps”.

McCall said the district is asking community stakeholders to be a part of a community assessment process, which is a broadband speed test to determine if the speed of the broadband is really a deficit to the community listed.

“We are going to be actively door knocking and doing some on the ground, what we call “ground truth” that we are establishing within each community, hopefully a community task force that will help us be able to validate whether those communities are underserved mainly because people tend to be more relaxed to come talk to local people rather than talking to me.”

McCall said he wants to make sure they get active data and encourages the community to get involved to help them gather it as well.

On the (SCABCD) website, there is a free community assessment that residents within the Blackbelt can take, that is filled with six to eight questions that inquire about their address, their home, whether it is a residential property or a business and their current home internet speed.

For more information, visit the register.broadband.scabcd.com website and contact 334-865-2654.