The FCC’s New Broadband Map Paints an Irresponsibly Inaccurate Picture of American Broadband

Back in 2011 the Obama Federal Communications Commission announced the creation of a $300 million broadband map using the Form 477 data Internet service providers provide the agency. At the time the map was heralded as a novel way to highlight the coverage gaps and competitive shortcomings of what is pretty clearly a broken US telecom market.  But users quickly discovered that despite the project’s steep price tag and good intentions, the map itself was almost useless. Before the map was mothballed due to a lack of funding, it spent a few years hallucinating competitors out of whole cloth, over-stating both speed and availability, while failing utterly to mention service pricing whatsoever.

At the core of the problem is, unsurprisingly, the influence of deep-pocketed telecommunication operators on lawmakers and regulators. The data ISPs submit to the FCC is rarely independently verified by objective third parties, and because companies like Comcast don’t want to emphasize the obvious lack of competition, data they provide tends to be overly-optimistic. As a result, the FCC has long used an ISP-approved, census-tract-based approach to measuring broadband. And the results are comical: according to current FCC logic, if a single home in a census tract has broadband, the entire neighborhood is declared served. This rose-colored glasses approach to data integrity has fueled policy for decades.