Data & Mapping

To Members of the 118th Congress, as you begin work on the many important issues facing our nation, NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association (“NTCA”) hopes that you will see broadband access as a key component to enhancing and sustaining our nation’s economic and civic well-being. We offer here a policy blueprint for achieving and sustaining universal broadband access in rural America.

Senator John Thune (R-SD) recently asked broadband stakeholders what Congress could do to improve the Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act (IIJA) with respect to broadband.

Lumen is taking a different path forward than the other big telephone companies. The company announced a major upgrade to its long-haul fiber routes that cross the country. The company’s main fiber strategy is to beef up the intercity network with plans to add six million miles of fiber to existing fiber routes by 2026. The existing Lumen long-haul fiber network came to the company in two acquisitions. The original network came when CenturyLink bought US West, which had earlier merged with Qwest, a major builder of long-haul networks.

As of 2021, roughly 13 percent of Alabama’s 1.65 million addresses were unserved by broadband of at least 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload (25/3), while about 19 percent of addresses were unserved by 100/20 service—the threshold recommended as the state’s five-year target to align with new federal funding opportunities. Higher-speed services like 100/100 and symmetrical 1 Gbps were available only to about 25 percent of addresses.

Ryan Grewell, who runs a small wireless Internet service provider called Smart Way Communications in Ohio, filed challenges to the Federal Communications Commission's new broadband map after his customers noticed that the FCC map falsely reported fiber Internet service was available at their homes. The FCC data was provided by Jefferson County Cable. In a reply to Grewell's challenges,  Jefferson County Cable Executive Bob Loveridge wrote, "You challenged that we do not have service at your residence and indeed we don't today.

The old definition of a broadband passing is quickly growing obsolete and the Federal Communications Commission's mapping effort is missing the way that America really uses broadband today. After a decade of talking about the inadequate FCC broadband maps, we finally decided to throw money at the issue and devise new maps. But in the decade it took to move forward, we’ve developed multiple non-traditional uses for broadband, a trend that is likely to expand.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken enforcement action for the first time under its Health Breach Notification Rule against the telehealth and prescription drug discount provider GoodRx Holdings Inc., for failing to notify consumers and others of its unauthorized disclosures of consumers’ personal health information to Facebook, Google, and other companies. In a first-of-its-kind proposed order, filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC, GoodRx will be prohibited from sharing user health data with applicable third parties for advertising purposes, and has agreed to pa

There needs to be a way to consistently track the billions in broadband infrastructure money coming from the federal government, said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation panelists. With $42.5 billion coming to the states from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, experts floated the idea of having mandated ongoing reporting requirements on what that money is doing. Brookings Institution senior fellow Nicol Turner-Lee said her research group is discussing their own version of a tracking me

An earlier model estimated how far the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding might go, using estimates of the unserved and underserved from the old Form 477 data. The prediction was that with an optimal allocation between states, there would be almost enough money to reach all the unserved and underserved. Well, we’re getting closer to real and final data, and an update is in: $41.4 billion at an average national cost of $6,214 per location should reach 6.7 million locations.

Not too long ago, the Federal Communications Commission released updates to its national broadband maps. For years, the FCC’s maps have been criticized for inaccuracies. That prompted state entities to collect their own broadband data, including the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).