FCC Publishes Map Showing Broadband Coverage Gaps
A new federal broadband map published Friday shows roughly 2% of American residential addresses lack access to broadband internet service, though officials said that figure could change as their database improves.
The Federal Communications Commission released the map, as ordered by a 2020 law, showing millions of addresses with information about their access to broadband internet service from a variety of companies.
The officials said members of the public can review information about their communities and correct any inaccuracies they find through an online challenge process.
Rough data from the system Friday showed nearly 98% of U.S. home addresses could access fixed internet service over the 25 megabit-per-second download speed threshold federal officials consider adequate for broadband. That coverage figure counted service from satellite-internet providers like
ViaSat Inc.,
EchoStar Corp.’s
Hughes and SpaceX’s Starlink as well as cable and fiber-optic companies.
Many Americans in both rural and urban areas lack fast broadband service despite billions of dollars spent by the federal government, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Regulators said the map will offer them a better guide for steering government internet subsidies toward the places that need them but said that the data set will improve before it is used to award new grants. The information will inform a wave of federal broadband programs, including $42.5 billion in grants included in the 2021 infrastructure law.
The draft map has an estimated error rate of 1% to 2%, said Jim Stegeman, chief executive of CostQuest Associates, a federal contractor that helped create it.
“It’s 114 million locations across the U.S.,” Mr. Stegeman said. “Did we get them all right? No. That’s really what the challenge process is meant to do.”
Some states didn’t wait to correct perceived inaccuracies in the basic address list shared with them earlier this year. New York in October said it would challenge the federal data on 31,000 locations based on conflicts with broadband maps that the state had already drawn.
FCC Chairwoman
Jessica Rosenworcel
said the “preproduction draft maps are a first step in a long-term effort to continuously improve our data as consumers, providers and others share information with us.”
Fixing flaws in the federal government’s data set has vexed policy makers for years. Congress in 2020 passed the Broadband Data Act to draft a better map but didn’t fund its mandate until 2021.
The new system replaced an older national broadband map launched during the Obama administration.
Cable-company group NCTA called the new draft “imperfect” yet a “marked improvement over existing coverage maps.”
FCC officials said the public can check individual addresses or download raw internet-access data tied to specific location codes. Matching location codes to real addresses requires a license from CostQuest. The company said it would make free licenses available to those who request them.
The new map is the result of a $45 million contract the commission awarded CostQuest last year. Limits on the FCC’s rights to share the data prompted the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, another federal agency, to announce a separate $50 million contract to access CostQuest’s location data set and cost models, meaning the federal government would be paying the company twice.
An NTIA spokesman said that the contract opportunity had not yet been awarded or rescinded. An FCC spokeswoman said that the agency entered its earlier contract for broadband-data collection efforts.
CostQuest’s Mr. Stegeman said that the NTIA is requesting more rights to his company’s cost models and other data than the FCC.
“When we put together our price proposal we took the terms that the FCC laid out,” he said.
—Anthony DeBarros contributed to this article.
Write to Drew FitzGerald at [email protected]
Corrections & Amplifications
Cable-company group NCTA called a new federal broadband map “imperfect” yet a “marked improvement over existing coverage maps.” An earlier version of this article incorrectly misspelled it as NTCA. (Corrected on Nov. 18.)
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
A new federal broadband map published Friday shows roughly 2% of American residential addresses lack access to broadband internet service, though officials said that figure could change as their database improves.
The Federal Communications Commission released the map, as ordered by a 2020 law, showing millions of addresses with information about their access to broadband internet service from a variety of companies.
The officials said members of the public can review information about their communities and correct any inaccuracies they find through an online challenge process.
Rough data from the system Friday showed nearly 98% of U.S. home addresses could access fixed internet service over the 25 megabit-per-second download speed threshold federal officials consider adequate for broadband. That coverage figure counted service from satellite-internet providers like
ViaSat Inc.,
EchoStar Corp.’s
Hughes and SpaceX’s Starlink as well as cable and fiber-optic companies.
Many Americans in both rural and urban areas lack fast broadband service despite billions of dollars spent by the federal government, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Regulators said the map will offer them a better guide for steering government internet subsidies toward the places that need them but said that the data set will improve before it is used to award new grants. The information will inform a wave of federal broadband programs, including $42.5 billion in grants included in the 2021 infrastructure law.
The draft map has an estimated error rate of 1% to 2%, said Jim Stegeman, chief executive of CostQuest Associates, a federal contractor that helped create it.
“It’s 114 million locations across the U.S.,” Mr. Stegeman said. “Did we get them all right? No. That’s really what the challenge process is meant to do.”
Some states didn’t wait to correct perceived inaccuracies in the basic address list shared with them earlier this year. New York in October said it would challenge the federal data on 31,000 locations based on conflicts with broadband maps that the state had already drawn.
FCC Chairwoman
Jessica Rosenworcel
said the “preproduction draft maps are a first step in a long-term effort to continuously improve our data as consumers, providers and others share information with us.”
Fixing flaws in the federal government’s data set has vexed policy makers for years. Congress in 2020 passed the Broadband Data Act to draft a better map but didn’t fund its mandate until 2021.
The new system replaced an older national broadband map launched during the Obama administration.
Cable-company group NCTA called the new draft “imperfect” yet a “marked improvement over existing coverage maps.”
FCC officials said the public can check individual addresses or download raw internet-access data tied to specific location codes. Matching location codes to real addresses requires a license from CostQuest. The company said it would make free licenses available to those who request them.
The new map is the result of a $45 million contract the commission awarded CostQuest last year. Limits on the FCC’s rights to share the data prompted the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, another federal agency, to announce a separate $50 million contract to access CostQuest’s location data set and cost models, meaning the federal government would be paying the company twice.
An NTIA spokesman said that the contract opportunity had not yet been awarded or rescinded. An FCC spokeswoman said that the agency entered its earlier contract for broadband-data collection efforts.
CostQuest’s Mr. Stegeman said that the NTIA is requesting more rights to his company’s cost models and other data than the FCC.
“When we put together our price proposal we took the terms that the FCC laid out,” he said.
—Anthony DeBarros contributed to this article.
Write to Drew FitzGerald at [email protected]
Corrections & Amplifications
Cable-company group NCTA called a new federal broadband map “imperfect” yet a “marked improvement over existing coverage maps.” An earlier version of this article incorrectly misspelled it as NTCA. (Corrected on Nov. 18.)
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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