One of the more bizarre things we do in the US is regulate broadband based upon broadband maps. There are numerous federal grant and subsidy programs that rely upon these maps (and the underlying databases that support them) as well as various state programs. The FCC also uses this same data when reporting broadband penetration in the country to Congress each year, as just occurred on February 9.

The maps are intended to show how many households can purchase broadband of various speeds. Currently the arbitrary speed thresholds tested are download speeds of 10 Mbps, 25 Mbps and 100 Mbps. These speeds are measured due to past decisions by the FCC. For example, the FCC chose a 10/1 Mbps speed goal for any company that accepted CAF II money to upgrade rural broadband. The FCC’s current definition of broadband is still set at 25/3 Mbps.

Anybody that understands broadband networks knows that much of the data included in the databases and the mapping is incorrect, and sometimes pure fantasy. That makes sense when you understand that the speeds in this mapping process are all self-reported by ISPs.

There are numerous reasons why the speeds in these databases are not an accurate reflection of the real world:

• There are still ISPs that report advertised speeds rather than actual speeds received by customers.
• Any speeds represented for a whole DSL network are inaccurate by definition. DSL speeds vary according to the size of the copper wires, the condition of the copper cable and the distance from the source of the DSL broadband signal. That means that in a DSL network the speeds available to customers vary street by street, and even house by house. We’ve always known that DSL reported in the mapping databases is overstated and that most telcos that report DSL speeds report theoretical speeds. I’m not sure I blame them, but the idea of any one speed being used to represent the performance of a DSL network is ludicrous.
• The speeds in the database don’t recognize network congestion. There are still many broadband networks around that bog down under heavy usage, which means evenings in a residential neighborhood. Nobody wants to be told that their network is performing at 10 Mbps if the best speed they can ever get when they want to use it is a fraction of that.
• The speeds don’t reflect that ISPs give some customers faster speeds. In networks where bandwidth is shared among all users on a neighborhood node, if a few customers are sold a faster-than-normal speed, then everybody else will suffer corresponding slower speeds. Network owners are able to force extra speed to customers that pay a premium for the service, but to the detriment of everybody else.
• The maps don’t reflect the way networks were built. In most towns you will find homes and businesses that were somehow left out of the initial network construction. For example, when cable companies were first built they largely ignored business districts that didn’t want to buy cable TV. There are lots of cases of apartment and subdivision owners that didn’t allow in the incumbent telco or cable company. And there are a lot of homes that just got missed by the network. I was just talking to somebody in downtown Asheville where I live who is not connected to the cable network for some reason.
• Not all ISPs care about updating the databases. There are many wireless and other small ISPs that don’t update the databases every time they make some network change that affects speeds. In fact, there are still some small ISPs that just ignore the FCC mapping requirement. At the other extreme there are small ISPs that overstate the speeds in the databases, hoping that it might drive customer requests to buy service.
• One of the most insidious speed issues in networks are the data bursts that many ISPs frontload into their broadband products. They will send a fast burst of speed for the first minute or two for any demand for bandwidth. This improves the customer experience since a large percentage of requests to use bandwidth are for web searches or other short-term uses of bandwidth. Any customer using this feature will obtain much faster results from a speed test than their actual long-use data speeds since they are actually testing only the burst speed. A rural customer using burst might see 4 Mbps on a speed test and still find themselves unable to maintain a connection to Netflix.
• Sometimes there are equipment issues. The best-known case of this is a widespread area of upstate New York where Charter has kept old DOCSIS 1.0 cable modems in homes that are not capable of receiving the faster data speeds the company is selling. It’s likely that the faster network speed is what is included in the database, not the speed that is choked by the old modems.
• And finally, speed isn’t everything. Poor latency can ruin the utility of any broadband connection, to the point where the speed is not that important.

Unfortunately, most of the errors in the broadband databases and maps overstate broadband speeds rather than under-report them. I’ve worked with numerous communities and talk to numerous people who are not able to get the broadband speeds suggested by the FCC databases for their neighborhoods. Many times the specific issue can be pinned down to one of the above causes. But that’s no consolation for somebody who is told by the FCC that they have broadband when they don’t.