Free Press Cautiously Optimistic on Pai's Proposed Reforms to Broadband Data and Maps

On July 11, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai released a draft proposal to improve the FCC’s broadband-deployment data-collection rules. These revisions are intended to increase the granularity and precision of the National Broadband Map, a semiannual data-collection effort that began at the National Telecommunications Information Agency (NTIA) in 2010. The full FCC will vote on Chairman Pai’s proposal at its Aug. 1 meeting. The chairman’s proposal features some immediate changes to the FCC’s data-collection process, as well as possible future changes the public will have an opportunity to comment on. The main immediate change Pai proposes is a new deployment data-collection process known as the Digital Opportunity Data Collection (DODC). For now this would operate alongside the current census block-level reporting methodology on the FCC's Form 477. The new report would require mobile and landline ISPs to submit their own detailed “polygon” coverage maps to the FCC to show which specific areas they serve in a census block when they serve only parts of that block rather than all of it. The other major immediate change up for a vote on Aug. 1 involves the definition of a covered area, with new rules intended to reduce overstated deployment in areas that ISPs may report they “could” serve without an “extraordinary” commitment of resources. And for the first time, the FCC will have a formal process to collect public input on the accuracy of its deployment maps.

Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner said, "Members of Congress, advocates, researchers and everyday people who have long clamored for better broadband-deployment data should be cautiously optimistic about Chairman Pai’s proposed reforms. The new Digital Opportunity Data Collection process should address the most common complaint about the FCC’s current mapping efforts: the potential for overstating deployment in certain rural areas."