We need better data to truly unlock technological neutrality in broadband deployment

Every year by law the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has to “determine whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.” If not, the FCC “shall take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market.” While broadband data is in better shape, there are still critical gaps that mean we don’t have enough data to fully answer the question. The FCC’s broadband deployment maps ask ISPs to submit their maximum advertised speed, when what we really want to know is the expected speed. When advertised and expected speeds differ, it could have a big impact on whether we consider a location to have adequate broadband. Even small differences between advertised and expected speeds could move a location between served, underserved, and unserved. Some states, conscious of this issue, are proposing in their Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program plans to treat fixed wireless (or portions of fixed wireless) as unserved for the purposes of BEAD. In order to achieve technology neutrality, the idea that state and federal subsidy programs need to set guidelines for the speed that they require of new broadband projects, but they should be agnostic to the technology ISPs use to reach those benchmarks we need to actually know the performance of each technology choice. This is what the FCC can do: give us better data on the real-world performance of DSL and fixed wireless so we can be confidently technology neutral moving forward.