The recent statistics of broadband usage in the US provide evidence that, unwittingly, the FCC is redlining rural America. OpenVault recently released its Broadband Industry Report for 4Q 2019 that tracks the way that the US consumes data. OpenVault has been collecting broadband usage for more than ten years, and the last two reports have been eye-opening.

The most important finding is that the average data consumed by households grow by 27% from 2018 to 2019 – in the fourth quarter of 2019 the average US home used 344 gigabytes of data, up from 275 gigabytes a year earlier.

The report also looks at power users – homes that consume a lot of broadband. They report that nearly 1% of homes now use 2 terabytes per month and 7.7% use over 1 terabyte per month. A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes. The percentage of homes using over 1 terabyte almost doubled from 4% a year earlier. This statistic is important because it shows the number of homes that are hitting the 1 terabyte data caps of companies like Comcast, AT&T, Cox, and Mediacom is quickly growing.

Homes are starting to buy gigabit broadband when it’s available and affordable. 2.8% of homes in the country now subscribe to gigabit speeds, up 86% from the 1.5% of homes that bought gigabit in 2018.

54% of homes now purchase broadband plans with speeds of 100 Mbps or faster. Another 23.6% of homes are subscribing to broadband between 50-75 Mbps. This means that nearly 78% of homes are subscribing to data plans of greater than 50 Mbps. The average subscribed speed grew significantly in 2019, up from 103 Mbps to 128 Mbps.

What’s the point of all of these statistics? They show that broadband usage and speeds in urban America is growing by leaps and bounds while broadband in rural America sits still. Urban broadband speeds have increased so rapidly that the average home in the US in 2019 got speeds that were 25 Mbps faster than what they had in 2018. The average speed of broadband in 2019 was more than 100 Mbps faster than the FCC definition of broadband. I contend that FCC actions and inaction have now culminated in the redlining of rural broadband households. It may sound drastic to call the FCC inaction redlining, but I think the word fits the situation.

Redlining historically has been used to describe how big corporations discriminate against poor neighborhoods. Redlining is more often due to neglect than to conscious decisions – grocery stores don’t consider poor neighborhoods as places to build; cable companies and telcos make upgrades in neighborhoods where they have the most customers or the highest revenue per customer. The consequence of redlining is that some neighborhoods get left behind.

The FCC has taken a series of actions that is dooming large parts of rural America to poor broadband for decades to come. One of the most egregious actions by the FCC is refusing to consider a faster definition of broadband, although every statistic shows that urban America is leaping far ahead of rural America and the broadband gap is now growing rapidly each year.

The decision to stick with the outdated 25/3 definition of broadband then boxes the FCC into having to allow federal grant dollars go to build technologies that meet the 25/3 definition of broadband. Considering how fast broadband speeds and consumption are growing, this is an amazingly shortsighted decision when considering that that grant recipients for programs like RDOF have six years to construct the new networks. There will be ISPs still constructing 25/3 broadband networks using federal money in 2026.

Next, the FCC has made it clear that any rural area that gets any federal or state subsidy – even if it’s to support 25/3 Mbps, or to support satellite broadband is not going to be eligible for future federal assistance. Once the FCC sticks you with poor broadband, they’re done with you.

Finally, the FCC continues to hide behind ludicrously dreadful maps that show good broadband available for millions of homes that have no broadband option. The rules for the 477 data collection are lousy, but that’s only half the problem, and I can’t recall ever hearing any discussion at the FCC about penalizing ISPs that file fraudulent speeds. There should be huge financial penalties for a telco that claims 25/3 speeds when nobody gets speeds even close to that or for WISPs that claim 100 Mbps speeds and deliver 15 Mbps. These ISPs are stopping whole counties from being eligible for broadband grants.

All of these FCC actions and inaction have doomed huge swaths of rural America from even participating in federal grant programs to get better broadband. If that’s not redlining, I don’t know what else to call it.