broadband map – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Shitty U.S. Broadband Maps Are A Feature, Not A Bug

from the can't-fix-a-problem-you-refuse-to-measure dept

We’ve noted a few times now how the U.S. is preparing to spend $42 billion to shore up broadband access, despite not actually knowing where broadband is or isn’t available. It’s part of a multi-decade effort to fix mediocre broadband without using real world data to actually do it, and without acknowledging that the primary reason U.S. is mired in mediocrity is thanks to regional monopolization and the vast state and federal corruption that protects it.

While the press and punditry haven’t yet found the courage to directly acknowledge that latter point (you might upset a campaign contributor, story source, or advertiser), the infrastructure bill has drawn new attention to the fact that it’s 2022 and we still can’t accurately measure U.S. broadband availability and speeds.

The Washington Post recently did a good story on this problem, and this week Protocol joined the rush with a good piece of its own.

Both stories note how, for years, the FCC determined a census block “served” with broadband if an incumbent ISP simply claimed it could service one home in that census block. Both correctly note that we’re finally seeing a bipartisan push to do something as states rush to the trough of both COVID relief and infrastructure broadband funds. Both correctly note that mapping methodology fixes are coming, but probably too late for the massive funding coming down the lane. And both stories ably document the frustration of local community leaders and reformers who are trying to fix a problem with a blindfold on:

“It just shows how woefully inadequate the current broadband maps are; yet, we continue to keep relying on them,? said Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel for Consumer Reports, who is familiar with the area.

?The original sin here is the FCC data,? said Peggy Schaffer, executive director of ConnectME, a state body that put together an application for grant money to build out broadband in seven areas of the state, including Deer Isle. ?The further original sin is any assumption that the FCC data, given what they ask providers for, is accurate, because it?s not.”

But what continues to be weird about the mainstream press’ coverage of this subject is they generally don’t like talking about why it’s 2022 and U.S. broadband maps still suck outside of some vague nods toward government incompetence.

They don’t really want to discuss how this rose-colored vision of U.S. broadband access and affordability is the active result of telecom lobbying. They don’t really talk much about how telecom giants have routinely scuttled efforts at better maps. They don’t really discuss how incumbents have lobbied to foster apathy on this subject, because bad maps help obfuscate the real-world harm of regional monopolization, limited competition, and telecom regulatory capture.

U.S. broadband isn’t utterly mediocre in 2022 due to funding or technological limitations. State and federal subsides have rained from the sky for decades, and fiber and assorted wireless technologies only get cheaper and faster to deploy.

U.S. broadband remains mediocre in 2022 because for literally the better part of a generation we’ve let regional monopolies like Comcast, AT&T, Frontier, Verizon, and Charter dictate most, if not all, state and federal policy proposals. That has generally included blanket neutering of most consumer protections, repeated rubber stamping of harmful mergers, and undermining telecom oversight at every opportunity. The end result is obvious to anybody who has been on hold with Comcast customer support, or tried to get their local phone company to upgrade DSL lines with top speeds straight out of 2003.

Yet when a major news outlet, regulator, or politician discusses U.S. telecom and broadband policy, corruption, monopolization, and the multi-decade assault on healthy competition are routinely never even mentioned. The problem is usually framed in vague, nebulous ways with terms like the “digital divide.” Shitty, spotty, expensive U.S. broadband is generally discussed as something that just happened one day, completely free of any causation. Bad maps and bad data are a cornerstone of this denialism. Throwing money at the problem without understanding where that money is going is also enabled by bad mapping.

Accurate broadband maps would only highlight how mindless consolidation, mergermania, and deregulation haven’t delivered the Utopian future telecom lobbyists and their think tank associates have been pushing for the better part of several decades. Accurate broadband maps would only incentivize policymakers to singularly focus on policies that drive more competition to market. Accurate broadband maps would only serve to highlight how heavily monopolized and broken the U.S. telecom market is. Accurate data might actually prompt folks to intelligently fix the problem with data-driven solutions, and given how profitable U.S. telecom monopolization is, we certainly wouldn’t want that.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband map, competition, failures, fcc

AT&T Provided FCC Bunk Broadband Availability Data Across 20 States

Wed, Apr 22nd 2020 06:23am - Karl Bode

We’ve noted repeatedly that despite a lot of talk from U.S. leaders and regulators about the “digital divide,” the United States doesn’t actually know where broadband is available. Historically the FCC has simply trusted major ISPs — with a vested interest in downplaying coverage and competition gaps — to tell the truth. The FCC’s methodology has also long been flawed, considering an entire area to be connected if just one home in a census tract has service. The results are ugly: the FCC’s $350 million broadband availability map all but hallucinates broadband availability and speed (try it yourself).

As pressure mounts on the agency to finally improve its broadband mapping, the scope of the problem continues to come into focus. Like this week, when AT&T was forced to acknowledge that the company provided the FCC with inaccurate broadband availability data across 20 states, impacting some 3,600 census blocks:

“AT&T disclosed the error to the FCC in a filing a week ago. The filing provides “a list of census blocks AT&T previously reported as having broadband deployment at speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream/3 Mbps upstream that AT&T has removed from its Form 477 reports.” The 78-page list includes nearly 3,600 blocks.”

You’ll recall that last year, Ajit Pai tried to claim that his “deregulatory agenda” (read: gutting oversight of an uncompetitive and hugely unpopular business sector) resulted in some amazing broadband expansion. Only later was it revealed that much of this growth either was triggered by things Pai’s FCC had nothing to do with (like fiber build-out requirements affixed to AT&T’s 2015 merger with DirecTV by the previous FCC), or a broadband mapping blunder by a small provider by the name of BarrierFree, which overstated its footprint to the FCC by a cool 1.5 million locations.

AT&T insists this latest error was caused by a “software bug,” and while relatively small in the scope of AT&T’s overall service area, consumer groups are a little curious how it could have gone unnoticed for the better part of two years:

“Aside from one even bigger error by an ISP called BarrierFree last year, Turner said he hasn’t “seen any other ISP reporting error like this before” and that “it is curious that the [AT&T] error may have gone unnoticed for 2-plus years.”…”While relatively small errors like this don’t end up changing conclusions about national trends, it certainly can impact the FCC decisions about where to spend?and where to not spend?scarce subsidy funds,” Turner said. “AT&T should be quite a bit more forthcoming about the exact nature of this error and how it discovered it, so that other ISPs can be sure they’re not making similar errors.”

While there’s no evidence of intentional under-reporting by AT&T, the timing is curious all the same.

After several decades of complaints, pressure has mounted on the FCC and Congress to actually do something as states vie for additional deployment subsidies. That culminated in the recent passage of the Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability (DATA) Act, which mandates the FCC to use more accurate geolocation and crowdsourced data to create more accurate maps and actually verify where broadband’s available before doling out billions in subsidies or issuing policy (fancy that!).

It will take years to complete, the FCC has warned they can’t afford to finish it without more funding, and the industry, which has spent years lobbying against mapping improvements for obvious reasons, could still find ways to either scuttle the effort or make access to the data difficult. Still, baby steps and all that. There are at least indications that the “what US broadband competition problem?” telecom policy set finally realizes this is a problem that needs fixing, even if truly better broadband maps are still several years away.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband map, data, digital divide, fake data, fcc
Companies: at&t

Senators Continue To Point Out Our Broadband Maps Suck

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Fri, Nov 30th 2018 06:26am - Karl Bode

For a country that likes to talk about “being number one” a lot, that’s sure not reflected in the United States’ broadband networks, or the broadband maps we use to determine which areas lack adequate broadband or commpetition (resulting in high prices and poor service). Our terrible broadband maps are of course a feature not a bug; ISPs have routinely lobbied to kill any efforts to improve data collection and analysis, lest somebody actually realize the telecom market is a broken mono/duopoly whose dysfunction reaches into every aspect of tech.

If you want to see our terrible broadband maps at work, you need only go visit the FCC’s $300+ million broadband availability map, which is based on the Form 477 data collected from ISPs. If you plug in your address, you’ll find that not only does the FCC not include prices (at industry behest), the map hallucinates speed and ISP availability at most U.S. addresses. Part of the problem is that the FCC declares an entire region “served” with broadband if just one home in a census tract has service. Again, ISPs fight efforts to reform this in a bid to protect the status quo.

Only when states are jockeying for broadband subsidies is this problem even brought up in DC, so as states vie for $4.7 million in wireless broadband subsidies via the FCC’s Mobility Fund Phase II, the problem has been seeing renewed attention.

Back in August, Montana Senator Jon Tester took these criticisms to a new level, bluntly insisting the FCC’s maps “stink” and that we really have “got to kick somebody’s ass” to get the problem fixed. Like Tester, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin also isn’t impressed and has been trying to challenge the FCC’s historically terrible coverage maps. This week Manchin again pointed out that our US broadband maps are terrible, while noting he was the only member of Congress to actually formally challenge them:

“Manchin argued the map does not accurately show broadband coverage in West Virginia, leaving some out of receiving reliable and affordable broadband. Rural areas were getting screwed, and all of West Virginia was getting screwed because these big-time carriers were showing, ?Oh, this is our area. We?ve got it taken care of, don?t worry. They?re only going to go into areas where they know that they?re going to have a return on an investment. It?s no different than electricity back in the 1930s.”

Therein lies the problem. Incumbent ISPs see no reason to deploy broadband into countless areas (rural and urban) country wide because they either don’t see a good return on the investment, or the unyielding need for quarterly improvements mean they don’t see a return quickly enough for Wall Street’s liking. And while that’s certainly understandable, at the same time incumbent ISPs do everything in their power to prevent cities from wiring themselves either, most notably via the 21 protectionist laws ISPs have quite literally written and purchased that ban towns and cities from exploring more creative solutions.

That’s particularly true in Manchin’s West Virginia, which we’ve long noted is the poster child for US broadband corruption and dysfunction, thanks in large part to regional incumbent telco Frontier Communications.

Last year, the ISP fired a seven year employee because, at his part-time job as West Virginia senate leader (note how nobody in the state thought that was a conflict of interest), he voted for a new law that would actually help improve broadband penetration and competition in the state. Frontier has also been under fire for the better part of the last decade over allegations that the ISP routinely rips off taxpayers and has wasted millions in past subsidies by intentionally misrepresenting how that money was spent.

So while it’s great that Manchin is the only Senator that actually cares about the country’s broadband maps, terrible broadband maps are just a symptom of a much broader problem Manchin tap dances around: corruption and cronyism. Even the most well-intentioned US lawmakers routinely let some of the least popular, monopolistic companies in America dictate both federal and state telecom policy, then stand around with an idiotic look on their faces as they wonder what could have possibly gone wrong.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband map, competition, fcc, joe manchin

GAO Again Points Out That Terrible U.S. Broadband Maps Drive (Intentionally) Terrible Broadband Policy

from the round-and-round-we-go dept

Fri, Sep 21st 2018 06:21am - Karl Bode

We’ve made it pretty clear by now that U.S. broadband policy generally stinks because the nation’s biggest broadband providers (and the politicians who adore their campaign contributions) want to keep the U.S. broadband market as it is: uncompetitive, expensive, and broken. There are myriad ways they accomplish this, from quite literally writing and lobbying for the passage of protectionist state laws, to convincing regulators like Ajit Pai to turn a blind eye to pretty much all of the worst habits of entrenched telecom mono/duopolies.

But at the heart of the problem sits the flawed form 477 broadband mapping data the FCC collects from broadband providers. With a vested interest in portraying a healthy market, ISPs have long submitted data that over-states broadband speed and availability. And, like a loyal servant to the industry it’s supposed to hold accountable, the FCC (under both parties) rarely does much to actually verify that this data is accurate. This bad data then goes on to inform bad FCC policy.

Case in point: the GAO released a study last week noting that the FCC routinely overstates broadband availability in tribal areas, which in turn results in policy that doesn’t do a good job fixing the problem. As the report (pdf) notes, the flimsy, unverified data the FCC collects is only compounded by odd FCC methodology decisions, like declaring an entire area “served” with broadband if just one home in a census tract has service:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) collects data on broadband availability from providers, but these data do not accurately or completely capture broadband access on tribal lands. Specifically, FCC collects data on broadband availability; these data capture where providers may have broadband infrastructure. However, FCC considers broadband to be ?available? for an entire census block if the provider could serve at least one location in the census block. This leads to overstatements of service for specific locations like tribal lands. FCC, tribal stakeholders, and providers have noted that this approach leads to overstatements of broadband availability. Because FCC uses these data to measure broadband access, it also overstates broadband access?the ability to obtain service?on tribal lands.

The bad data, and the FCC’s unwillingness to do anything about it for the last twenty years, then has a cascading effect down the line, the GAO found:

Additionally, FCC does not collect information on several factors?such as affordability, quality, and denials of service?that FCC and tribal stakeholders stated can affect the extent to which Americans living on tribal lands can access broadband services. FCC provides broadband funding for unserved areas based on its broadband data. Overstatements of access limit FCC?s and tribal stakeholders? abilities to target broadband funding to such areas. For example, some tribal officials stated that inaccurate data have affected their ability to plan their own broadband networks and obtain funding to address broadband gaps on their lands.

Of course this is certainly a problem for tribal areas, especially given the Pai FCC’s decision to try and limit the broadband improvement subsidies that help expand broadband coverage to these areas (which is odd for a guy that prattles on endlessly about how fixing the digital divide is his top priority).

But this same problem is playing out everywhere in the country, as cable providers secure a growing monopoly over broadband thanks to telcos that refuse to upgrade aging DSL lines at any real scale.

Our $350 million broadband map does a fairly terrible job mapping broadband, but it does do a wonderful job perfectly illustrating the width and breadth of this problem. The map is supposed to “educate and inform” Americans as to broadband availability. But as we’ve pointed out repeatedly, the plan hallucinates both speeds and ISP availability, and fails to include any data at all on pricing (at ISP request). You can try it out yourself here, perhaps noting that most of the ISPs it claims are available at your address likely don’t exist.

The end result is government regulators who look at one of the most broken markets in America through rose-colored glasses, resulting in our national broadband dysfunction never getting much better. And of course when somebody at the FCC does get the crazy idea of improving mapping and availability, ISP lobbyists quickly get to work killing those efforts. And, as you might suspect, the problem has only gotten worse under FCC boss Ajit Pai, who has taken steps to weaken the very definition of “competition” itself at incumbent ISP behest.

As such, keep in mind, when you see data highlighting how terrible U.S. broadband is, you can be fairly certain it’s significantly worse than that. And the reason should be pretty obvious: if somebody were to accurately illustrate the monopoly Comcast, Charter, Verizon, and AT&T enjoy (and the impact this has on everything from pricing to net neutrality), somebody might just get the crazy idea to embrace policies that actually do something about it.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband map, competition, fcc, gao

A Senator Says U.S. Broadband Maps 'Stink.' Here's Why Nobody Wants To Fix Them.

from the nothing-to-see-here dept

Tue, Aug 21st 2018 06:27am - Karl Bode

Last week we noted how an FCC “oversight” hearing fell well short of anything actually resembling, well, actual oversight. Three FCC staffers had just been caught making up a DDOS attack and misleading Congress, the press and the FBI about it — yet the subject was was barely even broached by lawmakers on either side of the aisle. It was another embarrassing example of the absence of anything resembling genuine accountability at the agency.

Fortunately one subject that did get a little attention was the FCC’s comically-terrible broadband maps, something we’ve covered at great lengths here at Techdirt. If you want to see our terrible broadband maps at work, you need only go visit the FCC’s $300+ million broadband availability map, which is based on the Form 477 data collected from ISPs. If you plug in your address, you’ll find that not only does the FCC not include prices (at industry behest), the map hallucinates speed and ISP availability at most U.S. addresses.

For example, at my home in Seattle there’s only one real ISP available: Comcast. But according to the FCC’s data, I supposedly have seven broadband providers to choose from:

Three of those options (CenturyLink DSL, CenturyLink fiber, and Startouch Broadband) don’t actually exist at my address, something I’ve confirmed with company engineers. Another three are satellite broadband providers, whose sky-high latency, high prices and daily or monthly usage caps make the services barely qualify as real broadband. That again leaves just Comcast as my only fixed line broadband option (aka a monopoly) in Seattle, supposedly one of the bigger tech-oriented cities in America. If you plug your address into the FCC’s map you’ll likely see similarly-misleading results.

As the FCC eyes where to deploy $4.5 billion in new rural broadband subsidies, more and more lawmakers are growing annoyed at the FCC’s failure on this front. That includes Senator Jon Tester, who at last week’s hearing proclaimed that the FCC’s broadband maps “stink”, and figuratively suggested that somebody (?_(?)_/?) should have their “ass kicked” for the failure:

“We’ve got to kick somebody’s ass,” he told the chairman. Pai joked that the FCC would take that as a figurative, rather than literal, congressional directive. Tester aligned himself with Democrat Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel’s comment that without good maps, a lot of money would be unnecessarily spent. Tester also said he was pleased Verizon was rolling out 5G in Indianapolis and other big markets, but said he was afraid they would never get it in Montana.”

While hearing attendees giggled and chortled about this figurative ass kicking somebody was supposed to receive, nobody actually addressed why this has been a problem for the better part of the last two decades. The real reason our broadband maps remain terrible is that telecom monopolies would prefer the public and lawmakers not receive an accurate picture of American broadband, lest somebody notice the mammoth deployment gaps and the countless American markets that lack any meaningful broadband competition whatsoever (especially at faster speeds).

The source of the FCC’s mapping data is the Form 477 data the agency collects from ISPs. This data has long been overly optimistic, and historically nobody really audits data provided by ISPs with a vested interest in downplaying deployment and competitive gaps. Worse, FCC policy dictates that the FCC deems an area “served” with broadband if just one ISP in a census tract has broadband. When somebody suggests that we should perhaps improve this data collection methodology, large ISPs like AT&T and Verizon pretty routinely lobby to prevent that from actually happening.

For example, when the previous, Wheeler-run FCC suggested we improve this methodology (pdf), Verizon complained in a filing (pdf) that more accurate data would be too costly and difficult for Verizon to adhere to:

“…the Commission must ensure that the costs of any new broadband data collection requirements do not outweigh the benefits. With respect to the Form 477, the Commission should avoid collecting data that is so detailed or voluminous that it is expensive for providers to produce, difficult for the Commission to process, or unhelpful to the public.”

Again though, ISPs like Verizon aren’t really worried about cost, the benefits to the public or how much work FCC staffers would have to do to process it, they’re simply worried that if we had accurate broadband maps, somebody might realize that U.S. broadband is a terrible hodgepodge of barely-motivated monopolies abusing angry and captive customers. Accurate data would highlight how Verizon has all but given up on upgrading or repairing aging DSL in countless states, and pricing data specifically would show how Americans pay some of the highest prices for the slowest service among all developed nations.

Once Ajit Pai was appointed FCC head, efforts to shore up broadband mapping were quickly forgotten. And again, you’d think that somebody at last week’s “oversight” hearing might have pointed this out. Instead, hearing attendees pretended that the United States’ terrible broadband maps had simply mysteriously materialized out of the ether, a blameless phenomenon apparently caused by shadowy gremlins. In reality, it’s long been abundantly clear why nobody wants to fix the problem: deep-pocketed ISPs by the name of Verizon, Comcast, Charter and AT&T don’t want the problem fixed.

If more accurate data further highlighted the massive problems in the U.S. broadband market, somebody might just get the crazy idea to actually fix it, and we certainly wouldn’t want that. Instead, for several decades now, the FCC and U.S. lawmakers have happily donned their ISP-provided rose-colored glasses, then played dumb when their real world experience doesn’t quite add up.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, broadband map, competition, fcc, john tester

Senators Say The FCC's Broadband Maps are a Bad Joke

from the hide-a-problem-so-you-don't-have-to-fix-it dept

Fri, Mar 23rd 2018 06:29am - Karl Bode

We’ve noted for some time how the broadband industry fights tooth and nail against more accurate broadband availability mapping, since having a better understanding of the broadband industry’s competition problem might just result in somebody actually doing something about it. This dysfunction and apathy was most recently illustrated with the FCC’s recent release of an “updated” broadband availability map, which all but hallucinates competition, speeds, and overall availability. This map (available here) also omits pricing data at industry behest, resulting in a $300 million pair of rose-colored glasses.

But it’s not just the FCC’s broadband availability map that’s under fire. FCC maps that determine which area get wireless subsidies (more specifically Mobility Fund Phase II (MF II) funding) are also a bad joke for many of the same reasons. As such, a group of Senators from both parties fired off a letter to the FCC last week, politely pointing out how the FCC’s new wireless coverage map dramatically overstates the availability of wireless broadband service:

“We write this letter to express our serious concerns that the map released by the Federal Communications Commission last week showing presumptive eligible areas for Mobility Fund Phase II (MF II) support may not be an accurate depiction of areas in need of universal service support. We understand that the map was developed based on a preliminary assessment from a one-time data collection effort that will be verified through a challenge process. However, we are concerned that the map misrepresents the existence of 4G LTE services in many areas. As a result, the Commission?s proposed challenge process may not be robust enough to adequately address the shortcomings in the Commission?s assessment of geographic areas in need of support for this proceeding.”

When you’re crafting telecom policy, actually understanding the “reality on the ground” is arguably important. But if you can twist, manipulate, and distort the data to indicate the industry doesn’t have any real problems, you can justify the kind of head-in-sand approach to leadership that birthed the telecom industry’s dysfunction in the first place. In this case, the MF II is intended to provide $4.53 billion in support over 10 years to preserve and expand mobile coverage to rural areas, something that won’t actually happen if maps aren’t correctly illustrating which areas need help and which areas don’t.

The Senators were quick to point this out in their letter to Ajit Pai, who has repeatedly and breathlessly professed his dedication to closing the digital divide, even while the lion’s share of his policies work to make these problems inherently worse:

“For too long, millions of rural Americans have been living without consistent and reliable mobile broadband service. Identifying rural areas as not eligible for support will exacerbate the digital divide, denying fundamental economic opportunities to these rural communities. We strongly urge the Commission to accurately and consistently identify areas that do not have unsubsidized 4G LTE service and provide Congress with an update on final eligible areas before auctioning $4.53 billion of MF II support.”

Some lawmakers, like New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, have taken to begging for public input on their websites in the hopes of getting a more accurate picture of real-world coverage. Some, like Kansas Senator Jerry Moran say the FCC map’s ?value is nil,” while Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker stated the FCC’s map was “utterly worthless of giving us good information.” That’s not particularly impressive for an FCC that has been crowing about how data driven it is, but it’s the price of supporting revolving door regulators who prioritize monopoly revenues over science, competition, innovation or the welfare of the public.

And while the telecom industry will be quick to insist that this is just the inherent dysfunction of government at play, the reality that this is a feature, not a bug. ISPs have routinely fought tooth and nail against every and any attempt to build better maps, fearing that a more accurate picture will only result in efforts to not only (gasp) improve competition, but might result in the subsidizing of smaller competitors that could disrupt the comfortable (but very, very broken) telecom sector status quo.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, broadband map, competition, fcc

The FCC's 'New' Broadband Availability Map Hallucinates Broadband Competition

from the rose-colored-glasses dept

Fri, Feb 23rd 2018 06:21am - Karl Bode

A few years back the FCC (under Obama’s first FCC boss Julius Genachowski) spent around $300 million on a broadband availability map that did a crap job actually measuring broadband availability. As we noted at the time, the map tended to hallucinate both available competitors and the speeds they could deliver to any address, providing a completely bogus sense of the nation’s competitive options. It also failed utterly to include pricing data at ISP behest, lest somebody actually look at the data and realize that a lack of competition drives high prices and abysmal customer service from coast to coast.

After efforts to further fund the inaccurate map stalled (you can find the old map sitting unused here), Ajit Pai’s FCC this week stated they’ve dusted off and relaunched the map as part of Pai’s purported dedication to the digital divide (the new version is available here for your perusal). An FCC press release (pdf) said the new map offers better data at a lower price than the original:

“As it works to close the digital divide, the Federal Communications Commission has updated and modernized its National Broadband Map so the map can once again be a key source of broadband deployment information for consumers, policymakers, researchers, and others. The new, cloud-based map will support more frequent data updates and display improvements at a far lower cost than the original mapping platform, which had not been updated in years.”

The FCC also took to Twitter to insist this new map will be the cornerstone of his office’s noble quest to close the digital divide:

Except the “new” map appears to be a half-hearted reboot that shares all the problems of the original map. Were you to actually use the map to determine where coverage caps exist, you’d walk away thinking there is no digital divide. In that sense, the map is doing the exact opposite of what the FCC is claiming.

Both the old and new iterations of the map all-but hallucinate available options out of whole cloth while vastly over-stating the speeds available to American consumers. That’s because it relies on ISP data provided the FCC via the Form 477 process; data that’s routinely taken at face value without any real independent analysis or confirmation by objective third parties. Data provided by companies with a vested interest in actively hiding deployment and competitive shortcomings for what should be obvious reasons. The same ISPs that lobby relentlessly to kill efforts at more accurate mapping.

For example, I can only get access to one ISP (Comcast) at my residence in Seattle, purportedly one of the nation’s technology leaders. Yet the FCC’s new map informs me I have seven broadband options available to me. Two of these options, CenturyLink DSL and CenturyLink fiber are somehow counted twice despite neither actually being available. Three others are satellite broadband service whose high prices, high latency and low caps make them unsuitable as a real broadband option. The seventh is a fixed-wireless option that doesn’t actually serve my address:

Again, only one of those is actually available or can be considered broadband, and it’s being delivered by a company with arguably the worst customer satisfaction and service scores of any company in America. Four of them don’t even meet the FCC’s own definition of broadband (25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up). Looking at the world through rose-colored ISP glasses isn’t “closing the digital divide.” In fact the perpetuation of inaccurate data makes the problem worse by convincing the public it’s not a real problem at all.

Of course if you’ve watched Ajit Pai repeatedly proclaim his breathless dedication to closing the digital divide while dismantling broadband programs for the poor this probably isn’t too surprising. Nor is it surprising if you’re familiar with Pai’s attempts to distort, twist, and manipulate data until the nation’s broadband competition issues magically disappear. After all, if the data clearly shows that American broadband is expensive and patchy due to limited competition among regional mono/duopolies with a stranglehold over state and federal lawmakers, somebody might just get the crazy idea to actually do something about it.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband map, competition, fcc