Last week the FCC decided to change the method of collecting data to support its broadband maps. It’s widely understood that the current mapping system badly misstates broadband coverage. That’s a big problem since the FCC uses the faulty broadband mapping data to make decisions like determining eligibility for broadband grants.

The most important new change is that ISPs have to produce mapping ‘polygons’ to show where they have existing customers. The ISP polygons can cover areas without current customers only where an ISP “has a current broadband connection or it could provide such a connection within ten business days of a customer request and without an extraordinary commitment of resources or construction costs exceeding an ordinary service activation fee.”

The new polygons fix one of the big flaws in the current broadband map. The polygons are going to make a noticeable difference when showing coverage for a cable company or a fiber-to-the-home network. Those networks have hard boundaries – there is always a last home served at the edge of the service area after which nobody else is covered. Today’s mapping by census block doesn’t recognize the hard boundaries of these networks and often counts customers outside these networks as having access to fast data speeds. This is particularly a problem in rural areas where a large area outside a small town might be counted as having 100 Mbps or faster broadband when there is no broadband.

Unfortunately, I don’t see the new maps making a big difference for the rest of rural America unless the ISPs providing DSL and fixed wireless service get scrupulously honest with reporting.  I contend that it is difficult, and perhaps impossible to accurately map these technologies – particularly for disclosing the broadband speed available at a given customer location.

Consider DSL. There are several factors that affect the speed of a DSL product. The one everybody knows is that the amount of delivered bandwidth decreases with distance from the DSLAM (the DSL core modem). However, the quality of DSL performance also depends upon the gauge of the copper serving a customer (there are different sizes of copper in a network), the quality of that copper (copper deteriorates over time), issues with the drop wire (drop wires can suffer from a variety of issues separate from issues in the network), the age and type of DSL electronics (there is still plenty of DSL from the 1990s), and the telco technology used on a given copper route to boost or extend signals. There are also customers who can’t get DSL due to the simple issue that a telco has no spare pairs of copper with which to serve them.

It is not unusual for two customers who are side by side to have a drastically different DSL experience – one might have a decent speed and one might not be able to get any DSL service. There is no way for a telco to reflect these highly local conditions on a broadband map. I’m doubtful that the big telcos even track the speeds available to existing customers. The telcos can’t know anything about homes that don’t have their service today.

The same goes for fixed wireless. Broadband speeds also decrease with distance from the tower. Wireless broadband speeds can vary with temperature and humidity. There is a definite fall-off in speed during precipitation. Wireless broadband using unlicensed spectrum is subject to interference, which can mysteriously come and go. The biggest obstacle for many wireless customers is foliage and other obstacles between a customer and the wireless tower. Just like with DSL, wireless companies don’t have any idea what speed they can deliver to a customer who is not on their network. They usually only know what’s available after climbing on a roof to investigate a connection.

Another big issue the FCC didn’t address is reporting of actual speeds. Our examination of the FCC mapping data for both DSL and fixed wireless shows that many ISPs don’t try to report actual broadband speeds. Instead, we see marketing speeds or something other speed standard being reported. Even if these providers map the polygons correctly, we won’t have a good idea of rural broadband coverage unless the ISPs try hard to report actual speeds. We hear from customers all the time that are being sold a rural broadband product that is marketed to deliver speeds of 10 Mbps, 15 Mbps, or 25 Mbps but which delivers only a few Mbps. If the maps don’t reflect the actual speeds they will still be largely worthless.

One last issue is a head-scratcher. Many rural networks are oversubscribed, meaning there are more customers than can comfortably be accommodated at the busiest usage times on the networks. How do you report the broadband speed for a customer who can get 20 Mbps downloads at 4:00 AM but 3 Mbps in the evening?

I applaud the FCC for finally getting rid of the census blocks. But we can’t pretend that this fix is going to make much of a difference for most of rural America. The rural broadband gap is mostly due to the neglected copper networks of the largest telcos. I can’t imagine any way to ever accurately map DSL and fixed wireless technologies., which means the maps are still going to be terrible in the places we most care about. The FCC is still going to harming rural America if they use the new maps to make decisions for important things like awarding grant money. The only real fix is to throw the maps away for those purposes and do something more sensible. For example, grant money ought to always be available to somebody that wants to build fiber to replace big telco copper – we don’t need a map to know that is good policy.