Mike Conlow

For many months, states have raced to add locations to the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Map, trying to maximize their allocation of broadband funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). But in a few short weeks, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will allocate funding and then my prediction is we’ll never hear about “missing locations” again.

The new version of the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Map makes a lot of progress on areas with fixed wireless or DSL coverage at speeds of exactly 25/3. Of the 2 million locations that were previously deemed Underserved 42% have moved to Unserved. Thirty-three percent are still Underserved, and 20% have moved to Served at 100/20 or better. Looking specifically at North Carolina, which had almost 10% of these locations (almost 200,000), we can see part of the story.

According to the Federal Communications Commission's new National Broadband Map, there are 8.3 million Unserved locations in the U.S. The FCC published “LBR Wireless” files for 41 states. As I rushed to download the data, I didn’t know what that meant as they hadn’t ever published them before, so I skipped them. I now know that to mean “Licensed by Rule” wireless.

On first look, the new Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Map seems to be a step in the right direction. For example, in Alaska, a known problem area, the number of locations and the estimated amount of money allocated increase significantly. But Michigan is another story. Michigan has 71,139 fewer Unserved locations on the new map versus the old one, by far the biggest decrease in the 50 states.

The Federal Communications Commission released an updated National Broadband Map. This is the version of the map that will be used by the NTIA to allocate $42.5 billion in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Overall, as of December 31, 2022, there are 114,537,044 Broadband Serviceable Locations (BSLs) in the country (including territories). That’s a net addition of 1 million BSLs. 7.6% of the BSLs are Unserved, which is 8.67 million, up 808,677 in the 50 states. 3.11% of the BSLs are Underserved, or 3.55 million nationally. There are some surprises.

The Federal Communications Commission’s “Funding Map” was just published and, at first glance, it needs work. The FCC’s own Rural Digital Opportunity Fund originally had winning bids for 5.2 million locations. As of the latest release of authorized winners, 3.5 million locations were moving forward.

Recently, a wireless company published a study about the cost to reach all the Unserved and Underserved. They estimated we need $307 billion to reach everyone. Generally, they make a case that the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program will run out of money, so the federal government should settle for wireless technology.

The Alternative Connect America Model (A-CAM) program is a monthly subsidy from the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund (USF) that covers about 1.27 million Broadband Serviceable Locations. A-CAM's funding comes from a surcharge on phone bills. But the “contribution base” — the number of phone lines — is shrinking. That means to generate the same amount of money, the percentage of the total phone bill needs to go up. That’s been happening quarter-over-quarter for years.

Should states run their own broadband mapping challenges? States could choose to award grants in an technology-aware manner, adding 3.1 million locations currently served or underserved by DSL or 25/3 fixed wireless, which would have the same — or an even better — effect. There are 218,878 locations where a DSL offering is advertising 100 Mbps download throughput and 20 Mbps upload throughput or better, and there is no other offering to the location that would serve them at 100/20.

If you zoom into Pine Bluff, Arkansas, on the Federal Communication Commission’s broadband map, it doesn’t take long to realize something doesn’t look right.