Navigating the US National Broadband Map

The National Broadband Map has been released, but how can you use it?

First, just go to the main page and type in an address. You'll receive a breakdown of all available broadband services around the building: wired and wireless. What can you do with this data? Well, one thing you might want to try is contacting these carriers to find out whether the map is accurate. If you find that one of the carriers listed doesn't actually provide service in the neighborhood you searched, you can tell the map that it's wrong. Or you can alert the map to an unmentioned ISP. But if you're okay with the data, the application lets you share it on Facebook, Tweet it, or create a tinyurl link to the page. This is the most practical thing you can do with the National Broadband Map—and it's definitely a service, in that it allows you to discover what kind of broadband plans are available in your area. But the site offers more ambitious researchers additional tools.

Go over to the broadband technology section of the app and you can map out available ISP technologies by geographic area. For example, you can create a chart of all Fiber-to-the-End-user networks across the United States, and then drill down into specific places to see where Fiber-to-the-Home is available in your region. The process is a little bit unwieldy, but it works. One thing you learn pretty fast is that the Midwest is where the fiber is. You can also map out your area via the various DSL flavors, DOCSIS cable, and fixed or mobile wireless. For broadband watchers who want to shame their politicians into encouraging more ISP deployment in their area, the map has excellent ranking capabilities. And the map also offers community snapshots of broadband services in any area.