The national broadband rollout has a blind spot: Lack of accurate, transparent data about internet access speeds

Unlike other advertisements for goods and services, there are no federally set standards for measuring broadband service speeds. This means there is no clear way to tell whether customers are getting what they pay for. To protect consumers, the FCC will need to invest in building a set of broadband speed measures, maps, and public data repositories that enables researchers to access and analyze what the public actually experiences when people purchase broadband connectivity. The FCC’s latest proposal for the creation of a National Broadband Map is already receiving criticism because its measurement process is a “black box,” meaning its methodology and data are not transparent to the public. Lack of transparency about these new maps and the methodologies undergirding them could lead to major headaches in disbursing the $42.5 billion in broadband infrastructure grant funding through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. The FCC’s methodologies have been greatly inaccurate, which has hampered the nation’s ability to address the digital divide. Independent analysis is crowd-sourcing data collection of monthly internet bills from across the country. Efforts like these from consumer groups are crucial to shed more transparency on the problem that official measures differ from consumer experience.

[Sascha Meinrath is the Palmer Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State and director of X-Lab, an innovative think tank focusing on the intersection of vanguard technologies and public policy.]