Analysis

There is one nuance of the Federal Communications Commission maps that doesn’t seem to be talked about. Internet service providers (ISPs) are only supposed to show coverage on the FCC maps for locations where they are able to serve within ten business days of a customer’s request for service. Any ISP that is claiming areas it won’t serve that quickly is exaggerating its coverage on the FCC maps. That can have real-life consequences. Consider the pockets of unserved areas inside cities. We worked with an urban area recently where we identified nearly 200 such unserved pockets.

Nearly 500 days had passed since President Joe Biden first picked Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] to become the third Democrat to the nation’s top telecommunications regulator, and she was nowhere closer to confirmation than when her name was first announced in October 2021.

One of the things that I don’t hear discussed enough is that some of the internet service providers (ISP) chasing rural broadband grants have high broadband rates. I’m curious how much emphasis State Broadband offices will put on the retail rates of grant applicants when evaluating grant winners. The two most easily identified ISPs with high broadband rates are Charter and Comcast. Charter rates for standalone basic broadband are now over $90 in many markets, and Comcast is nearing $100 per month.

Recently I wrote about how there are too many locations in the National Broadband Map when you compare it with the recently-released Census count of housing units. In rural areas, there are 30.1 million housing and business units according the National Broadband Map, and 24.6 million housing units according to the Census. This isn’t just academic.

The concept of “digital sovereignty” has become critical for not only Native American Tribes in their pursuit of affordable and robust internet access but also for non-Native partners in understanding the importance of partnering with Tribes. Dr.

The Federal Communications Commission circulated draft rules to govern the lower 42 GHz spectrum (between 42 – 42.5 GHz). This is within the range of spectrum referred to as millimeter wave spectrum. This is one of the more unusual FCC spectrum deliberations because this spectrum is totally empty – there is nobody currently authorized by the FCC to use the spectrum band.

The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, the US government’s $42 billion broadband grants program, requires recipients to provide a Letter of Credit for 25% of the grant award. Alongside the additional 25% match requirement, this capital barrier will shut out a huge number of internet service providers (ISP).The small and community-centered ISPs, minority and women-owned businesses, nonprofits, and municipalities that the program claims to be targeting will be most affected.

The Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program grant rules established by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) are going to be a difficult hurdle for many internet service providers to cross. If you are thinking of applying to BEAD, read these rules carefully. The rules start on page 56 of the NOFO.

“Updated data!” is a phrase that fills the hearts of data nerds everywhere and we’re here to help with an update to our Affordable Connectivity Program Enrollment Performance Tool. The data for the first version of the ACP Tool was current through January 2023, but we’ve fielded questions recently asking about updates. We now release an updated ACP Enrollment Performance Tool with data that runs through April 2023.

Ookla's Market Reports identify key data about internet performance in countries across the world. In the United States in second quarter 2023, T-Mobile was the fastest mobile operator with a median download speed of 164.76 Megabits per second (Mbps). T-Mobile also had the fastest median 5G download speed at 220.00 Mbps, and lowest 5G multi-server latency of 51 milliseconds (ms). Spectrum edged out Cox as the fastest fixed broadband provider with a median download speed of 243.02 Mbps. Verizon had the lowest median multi-server latency on fixed broadband at 15 ms.