Why it's so hard for some Americans to get high-speed internet

The Federal Communications Commission's broadband map, which invites you to plug in street addresses to see which companies sell service there and at what speeds, is a failure. It’s built on old and fuzzy data filed by internet providers that sometimes don’t even know where they offer service. And this stunted cartography of connectivity doesn’t just sandbag house hunters researching their biggest expense; it also holds back government efforts to cover broadband gaps -- for instance, the 5G-broadband agenda the Trump administration outlined April 12 that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said will include a $20.4 billion rural-connectivity fund. The FCC map fails because of how the commission gets deployment data from providers. Its Form 477 only requires them to list the fastest connections sold per census block, an area that can correspond with city blocks or cover a much larger expanse, depending on population. This data lags badly—June 2017 filings are the latest available—and we have to trust these providers to get it right.