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The Federal Communications Commission has for the first time collected accurate information on broadband availability from ISPs and intends to release a first draft of a new broadband map in November, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote on Friday.
The FCC last week “completed the first submission window for submitting data on where broadband service is and isn’t available,” a milestone in the year-long process of creating an accurate U.S. broadband map, it wrote. “For the first time ever, we’ve collected comprehensive site-by-site data on exactly where broadband service is available, and now we’re ready to get to work and begin developing new and improved broadband cards.”
The resulting map should show whether fixed broadband service is available at each residential or commercial location. The FCC’s inaccurate broadband maps have long made it difficult to distribute deployment grants where they are most needed.
Current maps are based on the Form 477 data collection program, in which ISPs report whether they offer service in each census block, essentially allowing ISPs to count an entire census block as served, even if it can only serve one home in the area. The new, more accurate maps will be used to allocate $42.45 billion from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program created by Congress in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. advertisement
Bad data bites internet users
In many cases, ISPs have misinformed potential customers into believing that Internet access would be available in homes that don’t have it. Comcast and other ISPs have charged thousands of dollars in upfront fees to wire homes even after falsely promising the service would be available at a specific address. The FCC mapping upgrade was not specifically designed to solve this problem, but it could ultimately make it easier for homeowners to get accurate information.
The FCC voted in August 2019 to require ISPs to submit more accurate data, although the broadband industry’s major trading groups objected to requirements to report availability below the census block level. Congress then passed legislation with similar requirements, allocating $98 million for the mapping overhaul in December 2020. A Rosenworcel letter to members of Congress in March 2021 explained why the process would not be completed quickly:
In order to fully implement the Broadband Data Act, the Commission needs to revise its data collection methodologies and platform. We need to create a framework where vast amounts of data from many different sources can be linked together and fed into a comprehensive, easy-to-use dataset on broadband availability. We also need to develop, test and implement IT systems to collect and verify these different data. We need to create – for the first time – a publicly available, data-driven map of operational locations where broadband is or should be available in the United States.
We then need to collect accurate and complete data from each individual broadband service provider on exactly where they offer broadband service, moving from counting blocks to digging down to the location of each home and small business – and then overlaying that information on our map of serviceable locations . And finally, we must find a way to collect data from a variety of independent sources, including state and local governments, tribal nations, consumers, and other private and public third parties to help us supplement and supplement the information we collect from the Service check providers.
As Rosenworcel explained Friday, the FCC has since “compiled the first-ever national data set identifying individual locations that should have a stable availability of broadband service” by drawing on “address records, tax assessment notices, pictures and building footprints, census data, land use records, Parcel boundaries and geospatial data of roads and streets. In contrast, our old broadband maps lacked all this location-specific information.”