Penn State conducted an intensive study of broadband in rural Pennsylvania. The study was funded by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, a legislative agency of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.  The results will surprise nobody who works with rural broadband and the study concluded that actual broadband speeds are significantly slower than the speeds reported by the ISPs to the FCC.

The study concluded that there was not one rural county in the state where more than 50% of residents actually achieve the 25/3 Mbps that the FCC has defined as broadband. The study came to these conclusions by conducting more than 11 million speed tests. Residents voluntarily provided an additional 15 million speed test results.

These results are similar to what’s been reported by Microsoft – they measure the actual speeds at which millions of customers download Microsoft software every month. Microsoft says such tests are the best measure of real broadband speeds and that roughly half of all broadband connection in the country are done at speeds slower than the definition of broadband.

Some of the Penn State results are dramatic. For example, in Westmoreland County the FCC maps show the whole county has access to 25/3 Mbps broadband and yet the average download speed for the county was only 12.3 Mbps. Allegheny County also shows 100% broadband coverage on the FCC maps and yet the average download speed in the County is only 20 Mbps.

The study further showed that the difference between actual and reported speeds have been widening since 2014. That’s likely to mean that the FCC maps are showing improvements that aren’t really happening in the rural networks.

I have to point out, in the FCC’s favor, that households don’t always buy faster broadband when it’s available – many households continue to purchase older, slower DSL to save money. However, this phenomenon can’t come close explaining the results in Westmoreland County, where the actual speeds are only 12 Mbps – half the FCC’s definition of broadband. A more likely explanation is that the maps for the County show broadband available in rural areas where actual DSL speeds are only a few Mbps.

CCG helps our clients conduct similar tests on a smaller scale and we’ve seen similar results all across the country. The FCC maps are often pure fantasy. We routinely find rural areas that supposedly have fast broadband where there is no broadband. We often study county seats that supposedly have fast data speeds and yet where actual speed tests show something far slower. The speeds on the FCC maps come from data that is self-reported by ISPs, and some of the ISPs clearly have reasons to overreport the available speeds.

What is really irksome is that the FCC knows all of this already. They know that ISP reported broadband speeds are overstated, and yet the FCC compiles the faulty data and makes policy decisions based upon garbage data. The FCC’s recently published their 2019 Broadband Deployment Report which concluded that broadband is being deployed in the US on a reasonable and timely basis. In my opinion, that conclusion borders on fraud since the FCC knows that much of the data used to reach that conclusion is wrong. The real broadband situation in rural America is much more like what is being reported by Penn State and Microsoft. Rural residents in places like Allegheny County, Pennsylvania should be incensed that the FCC is telling the world that their broadband is up to snuff.

The FCC is starting a multi-year process to ‘improve’ the broadband maps – but this will just push the problem a few years into the future. The fact is that it’s almost impossible to map real broadband speeds in rural America. How can you map broadband speeds when real networks in rural America are in lousy shape? How can you map broadband speeds when two neighbors can experience drastically different broadband speeds due to the nuances in their copper wires? The big telcos have neglected maintenance on copper networks for decades and it’s no surprise that broadband speeds vary widely even within a neighborhood.

The best solution is to throw the maps away. The fact is that every place served by copper ought to be considered as underserved, and locations more than a few miles from a DSLAM ought to be considered as unserved. We need to stop pretending that we can somehow make a realistic map of broadband speed availability – the proposed new mapping might be a little better, but it can never be accurate. Every ISP technician that works in the field will tell you how ridiculous it is to try to map rural broadband speeds.

We need to face facts and recognize that we’re going to have these same issues until rural America gets fiber. There are now enough places in rural America with fiber to show it can be done. The FCC’s ACAM program has shown that fiber can work if there are subsidies to help with the construction costs. We’ve understood this for more than a century since we built the rural electric grids. But we probably can’t fix the problem until we’re honest about the scope of poor broadband. I have big doubts that this FCC is ever going to acknowledge that the real state of broadband is the one highlighted by this study.