Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability (DATA) Act

Just days after the Federal Communications Commission released an initial draft of a national map showing the availability of broadband internet, some groups are criticizing what they see as the map’s shortcomings. A letter from Public Knowledge dated Nov.

With just over a month remaining until the Federal Communications Commission's deadline for broadband map challenges, the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition is raising concerns over how the map displays community anchor institutions (CAIs) and is asking the FCC to revise its process.

Burt Lum—broadband strategy officer for the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism— is urging state residents to review newly published online broadband internet service maps and report any inaccuracies as part of a crowdsourcing initiative that could help steer millions of dollars in federal funding to Hawaii. Broadband service providers, including Hawaiian Telcom and Charter Communications, have already identified missing data and other problems with the maps, and it is likely there are other errors or flaws that have not yet been spotted.

There are two ways to judge the Federal Communications Commission's new broadband maps—the mapping fabric and the broadband coverage story. The State of Vermont has already sent a challenge letter to the FCC that says that 11% of the locations in the Fabric don’t match Vermont’s own data. Even worse, Vermont says that 22% of locations it knows about are missing from the FCC map. Vermont also looked at the broadband coverage claims by ISPs. According to the new maps, over 95% of Vermont homes have access broadband to broadband of at least 100/20 Mbps.

Overall, there are 112 million Broadband Serviceable Locations (BSLs) in the country (excluding territories). Of those, 7.15% of the BSLs are Unserved, which is 8 million. 5.2% of the BSLs are Underserved, or 5.8 million nationally. The Unserved and Underserved numbers provided are how I expect the calculation to be done for the BEAD program: it excludes LEO satellite service and also excludes service provided over unlicensed fixed wireless. It’s important to remember that the denominator in these calculations is BSLs, not housing units. BSLs include small businesses.

Business Oregon is seeking a consultant (or team) to complete several projects necessary for Oregon's participation in new federal programs to develop highspeed broadband internet access and digital literacy and adoption. The selected party will conduct robust community engagement and data collection, as well as prepare a number of plans which are listed below:

The Federal Communications Commission released an updated map detailing broadband availability nationwide that will be used to allocate $42 billion in federal funds to states and territories to help expand access to affordable high-speed internet.

The Federal Communications Commission released a pre-production draft of its new National Broadband Map. The map will display specific location-level information about broadband services available throughout the country – a significant step forward from the census block level data previously collected. This release of the draft map kicks off the public challenge processes that will play a critical role in improving the accuracy of the map.

The Federal Communications Commission will unveil the first draft of new, dramatically improved national broadband availability maps.

The Federal Communications Commission is set to release the first round of its updated national broadband map.