U.S. Broadband Maps Suck Slightly Less, But Still Let ISPs Comically Over-State Coverage

We’ve noted more than a few times that for all of the government’s talk about wanting to “bridge the digital divide,” it’s consistently struggled to even map where broadband access is or isn’t available. The government has spent more than $400 million on trying to map broadband access to date, and while there certainly have been improvements, the end result continues to be a decidedly mixed bag.

With $42 billion in looming broadband subsidies headed to the states courtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill, the states and feds are in a rush to finally address our shitty mapping to try and minimize waste and make sure this money goes to areas that need it most.

While the new maps are definitely an improvement, the FCC’s latest still has problems with over-stating coverage and available speeds (try it for yourself). You can input any address and watch in real time as the FCC basically hallucinates competitors and speeds, routinely claiming that areas under a Comcast monopoly actually have the option of a dozen different meaningful competitors.

The FCC also still refuses to collect and share pricing data, which industry opposes because it would only work to further highlight monopolization, consolidation, and muted competition. And the underlying data isn’t transparent or owned by the public itself, with the latest improved $44 million mapping contract doled out to a company named Costquest that won’t let anybody look under the hood.

Recently the FCC released the 4th version of its National Broadband Map, with data it claims to be accurate as of December 2023. In the 3rd version of the map, the FCC insisted there were still 10.1 million locations deemed “underserved or unserved” when it comes to broadband access. Broadband mapping gurus say that in just six months that number has dropped a whopping 11 percent to 8.8 million.

But the kind of folks who actually work with the reality on the ground, like broadband consultant Doug Dawson (who advises municipalities on how to improve regional broadband infrastructure), that quick of an improvement raises more than a few eyebrows:

“Is it believable that 1.3 million fewer unserved locations in the country got upgraded to faster technology in a six-month period? Almost by definition, most of the unserved and underserved locations are rural. While there is a lot of fiber construction underway due to broadband grants, it’s hard to picture that grants covered that many new rural locations during a six-month period.

Consider the amount of investment that would have required. If the average cost per upgrade was $6,000, this would have meant completing $7.8 billion of construction in the second half of last year in rural areas. It’s hard to think even half of that was spent in a six month period.”

So what’s actually likely to account for our sudden improvement in broadband coverage? ISPs are likely changing the areas they claim to cover and the speeds they are claiming to provide in order to elbow in on billions in looming subsidies. That’s made possible, in part, because the FCC allows ISPs to declare broadband coverage based on “advertised” speeds, not reality:

“The FCC mapping rules only require ISPs to report marketing broadband speeds. If an ISP markets to customers with speeds ‘up to 100/20 Mbps’ it is not breaking FCC rules to make that claim in the maps – even if it only delivers 30/5 Mbps to a location. This FCC rule to allow marketing speeds instead of some approximation of actual speeds has made a travesty out of the maps.”

Given I talk to a different municipality pretty much every week about broadband access, I know for a fact that the infrastructure bill’s BEAD (Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program) funding is going to do a lot of good for disconnected communities. But from decades of telecom reporting experience I also know the government’s belated and clumsy rush to finally care about accuracy in broadband mapping is going to result in oodles of fraud.

This is an industry filled with clever regional monopolies that have abused federal subsidy programs for decades with very little accountability, grabbing billions upon billions of dollars in exchange for fiber networks that are always somehow mysteriously left half-deployed, if they’re deployed at all. Often managed by an FCC that, across parties, routinely redefines feckless oversight (it’s why the Biden administration chose the NTIA and states to manage BEAD funding).

The scale of the infrastructure bill broadband subsidy program is staggering, and while well intentioned and genuinely poised to do a lot of good, we’d likely have avoided a significant chunk of looming fraud if the government had shaken off lobbying influence and started caring about factual reality decades earlier.