Penalties for FCC Mapping

On August 22, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threatened significant fines for eleven internet service providers (ISPs) that failed to participate in the FCC broadband data collection and mapping process. These ISPs have been issued several warnings from the FCC to begin complying with the broadband mapping rules. In this recent order, the FCC gave the ISPs 30 days to respond to the order. The FCC said that failure to meet that deadline could result in a fine not to exceed $24,496 per day or a maximum fine of $183,718. For folks who work with broadband maps every day, the fines I’d really like to see are for ISPs that distort the reported broadband speeds that are available to customers. But we’ll never see fines for misstated speeds since the FCC gave permission to ISPs to do so.