The National Broadband Map—Getting Better All the Time

In November 2022, the Federal Communications Commission released new broadband maps that provide a snapshot of the state of broadband deployment in the United States. Here are some key developments and things the FCC learned over the past four months.

• To date, stakeholders—primarily state governments—have stepped up to provide more than 600 bulk challenges covering provider reported availability at several million locations.
• The FCC has processed challenges to availability data for over 4 million locations.
• Every two weeks, the FCC's map is updated to reflect all availability challenges that have been resolved.
• The first version of the FCC's Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric (Fabric) identified over 113 million locations where fixed broadband could be installed. For context on how much more granular this data is than earlier maps, there are 8.1 million census blocks. 
• The new Fabric reflects over 114 million broadband-serviceable locations, a net increase of 1.04 million and a net adjustment of less than 1 percent.
• The FCC has added 2.96 million new broadband-serviceable locations. (Percentage-wise, the most significant increases are in Alaska, US territories, and Tribal lands.)
• The FCC also removed 1.92 million locations from the first version. (The reason for these reductions ranged from data refreshes to more sophisticated tools to help remove structures like garages and sheds from the total count.)