After Decades Of Dysfunction, The FCC Finally Shores Up Terrible Broadband Mapping
from the you-can't-fix-what-you-can't-measure dept
Despite a lot of political lip service paid toward bridging the digital divide, U.S. policymakers still don’t fully know where broadband is or isn’t available in the U.S. They have some well-informed notions, but outside analysts have long made it clear that the maps the government uses to shape policy and award subsidies are often an idiotic hallucination (plug your address into their current map if you need evidence).
Senators eager to get their chunk of a massive infusion of new broadband funding finally voted for the Broadband DATA Act in 2020. The ACT requires that the FCC do a much better job verifying ISP coverage claims, include crowdsourced data, and stop its idiotic, decades-old methodology of declaring an entire census block “served” with broadband if just one home in that block can get service (seriously).
This week, the agency will release the first fruits of its labor, a pre-production draft of new broadband map that tries to more accurately determine broadband availability:
Historically, the FCC’s maps have been based on broadband availability data collected at just
the census block level rather than the location level, which kept unserved locations hidden if
they were in partially served census blocks.
Keep in mind taxpayers have already spent upwards of $350 million on the existing, shitty maps, which the agency based all of its policy decisions on. For thirty years these bad maps have helped obscure a lack of competition and the real impact of monopoly power, which is why entrenched telecom monopolies have historically fought against improving them.
It literally took decades and an act of Congress for the FCC to exhibit even baseline levels of competency as it pertains to accurately mapping what’s increasingly viewed as an essential utility. And we’re still not quite there yet; this first incarnation is very much going to be considered a beta.
Getting this right is kind of important given there’s more than $50 billion in COVID relief and infrastructure funds about to head out to states, and monopolies have long abused bad maps to grab money they often don’t deserve.
As we’ve noted previously, there’s still a lot of concerns that the FCC is allowing ISPs to overstate availability, haven’t yet developed a working challenge system that allows states and municipalities to challenge ISP data that’s intentionally misleading, and are still basing everything primarily on data from ISPs that have a longstanding vested interest in downplaying speed problems and coverage gaps.
In New York State, for example, officials who got an early look at the FCC’s new map still found 31,000 locations that weren’t included. And state leaders have repeatedly told me in interviews that they’re not confident in the FCC’s data challenge process. They also say the FCC has discarded a lot of the hard work states have done mapping broadband while the FCC spent a decade napping. On top of that, there are remaining concerns by researchers about how transparently accessible this data will be once it’s finally released to the public.
Again, any improvement in the data and methodology is welcome. Bad FCC maps help downplay broadband competition issues and open the door to subsidy fraud, so getting this right is extremely important. But it’s still monumentally pathetic it took this long to even get this far, and there’s still plenty of work that needs to be done.
Filed Under: broadband, broadband maps, digital divide, fcc, high speed internet, mapping fabric, monopolies, telecom
Comments on “After Decades Of Dysfunction, The FCC Finally Shores Up Terrible Broadband Mapping”
“a pre-production draft…” Which will survive about an hour before the money starts rolling in to change the language and create loophole the size of a bus.
Shouldn’t that be “create loopholes the size of a coverage gap”?
sumgai
dysfunction
“After Decades Of Dysfunction, The FCC …”
Gee, you’d think after so many decades of failure in many areas that somebody would notice a fundamental flaw in the FCC regulatory concept. But no.
Re:
there is nothing wrong with the concept of a regulatory agency, Europeans have many that are much more functional that the US versions. There is however a lot wrong with making the heads of such agency short term political appointees, who are often taking a sabbatical from the Industry they are meant to be regulating.
Re:
Right, it should be a full on free-for-all, that would certainly work!
The maps are just such a joke. I put in my rural home (not that rural—about 90 minutes outside of a major west coast city but whatever) and it shows:
1) Coax with 250 down – no coax at all in the entire neighborhood. Don’t know what they’re smoking.
2) Starlink – correct, but the surrounding trees make it borderline useless, and the cell is full anyway, so you can’t sign up.
3) Viasat – not usable because of the trees and also a total joke of an ISP that’s effectively useless even when you have LOS.
4) ADSL with 30 down 1.5 up – CenturyLink is no longer allowing new DSL signups (and even so it’s a joke at about 900kbit down).
5) Hughes – more useless than viasat
6) Fixed Wireless by something called “telephone and data systems inc.”). Fixed wireless does not exist; it’s almost impossible even to get a faint cell signal. Again, no idea what they’re smoking with this one.
7) VSAT systems – whatever it is, it’s definitely not usable and the FCC even shows it as having only 2mbit down. I don’t think it even exists.
So, according to the FCC I’m in dark-blue territory with 7 competitive broadband providers and 250mbit internet. In reality, the only providers that you currently could sign up for are Viasat and Highesnet, which is true everywhere in the US and are both absolute garbage.
Re: @ starglider
Same here over reported like crazy. I will tell you Starlink works when surrounded by trees. I put mine on the roof. You just need an open view of the northern sky. If you can see the sky at all you are fine. Mounted mine on the roof and there’s 💯% visibility when I check with the app. Only problem for me is I’m on Best Efforts til they actually open up the east coast. Still it’s better than the other options.
Dont think
How about comparing the Old lists of locations with NEW, current lists?
They have to show expansion.
That, would help. But why not get every customer, from cellphone to Home computer, to Make a connection and have it trace routed. Just ask All Citizens to connect to a site and Run a program, with EACH device they use.
Collect the date needed, and Compare it with all collected data.
BUT, as with every Gov. site it would crash in 10 minutes. Because there is NO site that can handle 1,000,000 hits in an hour, that belongs to Any ISP for the consumer.
But consider the avg. Number of devices we use for EACH person or home. Should be about 4.
I still stand by the comment of the ISP’s Bought the tier 1 system, but hasnt shown Anything of any updates EXCEPT in high WANTED area’s like Stock exchange and Cell towers.
The only problem I tend to see is WHO is responsible for the Interconnects out Between locations. As the ISP’s only want to deal with the last mile, Even after taking the Tier 1 connections.
If the Main, Out in the Wild, interconnections have been Built Properly, there Should be easy ways to upgrade it Without Digging up 1/2 of the freeway system to do it. The REAL problem is doing it Properly with Multiple connections in every direction like a REAL WEB, insted of 1 connection to this area, and another to that, as cheap and simple as possible(which is about what we have now)(they have left allot of old lines behind, connected or not)
Its Siterh they FIX it, or the gov. Actually by someone else, Gets it done. Then Charges the ISP’s for access. Whcih wont go over well, as the ISP’s will just add a Surcharge to the connection fee’s And BITCH that the gov. did it.