Data & Mapping

The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) announced the state broadband map is now available for public comment. The map is available on the TNECD mapping site, and the public comment period closes on May 30, 2022. TNECD invites broadband providers, local leaders and community members to provide input on the map via TNECD’s broadband site.

Alan Davidson, the administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) who is overseeing the disbursement of the $42 billion Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, said the "starting gun" of the program will go off May 16 when states can officially start declaring they want the money.

The Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Data Task Force, Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB), and Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA) announce that fixed broadband service providers may now access a preliminary version of the Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric (Fabric) to assist them in preparing their broadband availability data for the Broadband Data Collection (BDC). This preliminary version of the Fabric will help fixed service providers with developing processes to prepare their availability data submissions.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau, in conjunction with the FCC's Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force, announced that the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), has posted the total locations deployed to by Connect America Fund Phase II (CAF II) Auction support recipients, reflecting deployment as of December 31, 2021.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Rosenworcel sent a letter to Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-IN) in response to his letter on the efforts of the FCC to collect more precise and reliable broadband deployment data, and urging the FCC to include veterans in the FCC’s data collection and reporting. Chairwoman Rosenworcel said when the FCC completes its initial efforts to improve broadband data collection, veterans across the country will have better access to information about what services are available where they live.

On March 31, the House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a hearing called "Connecting America: Oversight of the FCC." Each of the current four Federal Communications Commissioners testified before the subcommittee, led by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and including Brendan Carr, Nathan Simington, and Geoffrey Starks. Rep.

Smaller and mid-sized cable/broadband operators are telling the Biden Administration not to hand out billions of dollars in broadband subsidies to the states until there are better broadband deployment maps, and when they do hand it out, to make sure it goes to unserved areas first.

Two surveys conducted by researchers at the University of Kansas Institute for Policy & Social Research from January 2021 to January 2022 found that over 1 million Kansans live in a ZIP code where recorded average download speeds are below 100 Mbps download /20 Mbps upload. Those speeds are considered an adequate baseline for people engaged in online education, streaming video, downloading and uploading large files, and households with multiple users.

On February 22, 2022, the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Data Task Force and Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA) announced the filing dates for the initial Broadband Data Collection (BDC) availability data collection. On March 9, the Task Force, OEA, the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, and the Office of Engineering and Technology released the BDC Mobile Technical Requirements Order, which adopts technical requirements to implement the BDC mobile challenge, verification, and crowdsourcing processes.

This report summarizes information about Internet access connections in the United States as of June 30, 2019 as collected by Federal Communications Commission Form 477. For purposes of this report, Internet access connections are those in service, over 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction, and reported to the FCC through Form 477. Total Internet connections increased by about 4.7% between June 2018 and June 2019 to 449 million.