Unreliable BDC Data

Representatives of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association met with Hayley Steffen, legal advisor to Commissioner Anna Gomez for wireline and space, to discuss the impacts of unreliable Broadband Data Collection (“BDC”) data and “broadband overreach” on policy and funding decisions made by the Federal Communications Commission and provided a series of recommendations related to broadband availability mapping and BDC processes. While the FCC decided in 2021 that what a provider “makes available” would be determined by reference to a provider’s “advertised” levels of performance, and while it declined requests to take into account actual performance for fear that this would devolve into disputes over throughput, NTCA explained that tying reporting to “actual” speeds by reference to robust and well-established technical standards that indicate what levels of performance might be reasonably expected from a given network technology and architecture—paired with analysis of chronic underperformance in actual results—would represent a far more reliable measure of availability than the perspectives of individual providers’ marketing departments. Suggested solutions include the creation of public heat maps, updates to BDC challenge codes, making successful challenges more “sticky,” strengthening verification efforts, further updates to technical standards, and closing the loophole that permits certain providers to avoid submitting technical explanations for propagation assumptions), as well as issues that require more careful consideration in the context of other decision-making (such as ensuring that a provider’s ability to serve some in a given geography does not become the basis for deeming that provider a substitute for universal service in that geography).