FCC Chairwoman Rosenworcel Responds to Members of Congress Regarding the Commission’s Efforts to Develop an Iterative National Broadband Map

Since the passage of the Broadband DATA Act, the Federal Communications Commission has worked carefully to implement the requirements of the law and to begin the iterative data collection and challenge processes envisioned by the Act through the creation of its Broadband Data Collection program. As required by the Broadband DATA Act, the FCC has built an entirely new data-collection system for ingesting, validating, and aggregating both provider data for download and publication on the National Broadband Map. To do so, the Broadband DATA Act required the Commission to develop the Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric (Fabric). The Fabric is a common dataset of all broadband serviceable locations (BSLs) in the United States where mass market fixed broadband internet access service is available or could be installed. The Fabric is an evolving database of all BSLs nationwide that is used in the production of the map when combined with information from service providers and data from the challenge process. Consistent with the Broadband DATA Act, the Fabric is updated continually. The map we have is a work that is always in progress, just as Congress designed it to be in the Broadband DATA Act. I am confident that the Broadband Data Collection process we have established will help improve the map just as Congress envisioned.