The FCC recently released a Notice of Inquiry asking about the state of broadband in preparation for the upcoming 2021 report to Congress. The FCC is required to annually examine the state of broadband and this is the sixteenth NOI that is the first step towards creating the annual report.
In the NOI, the FCC provides a preview of what they are planning to tell Congress in the upcoming report. The FCC continues to pat itself on the back for closing the digital divide. Consider the following facts cited by the FCC in their opening paragraphs of the NOI:
The number of Americans lacking access to fixed terrestrial broadband service of at least 25/3 Mbps continues to decline, falling more than 14% in 2018 and more than 30% between 2016 and 2018. In addition, the number of Americans without access to 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband service with a median speed of at least 10/3 Mbps fell approximately 54% between 2017 and 2018. The vast majority of Americans, surpassing 85% of the population in 2018, now have access to fixed terrestrial broadband service at 250/25 Mbps, representing a 47% increase in the number of Americans with access to this speed since 2017. Over the same period, the number of Americans living in rural areas with access to such service increased by 85%.
These statistics all sound great, but unfortunately, we can’t believe any of these claims. The FCC continues to draw conclusions based upon the badly flawed Form 477 data reported to the agency by ISPs. In every rural county I have examined, there are overstatements by ISPs of broadband speeds and availability – and those overstated coverages are included by the FCC as places that have good broadband. I’ve written blogs about entire counties that the FCC thinks haves good broadband, but where the ISP-reported broadband doesn’t exist. If the FCC’s NOI was being truthful, the above list of statistics would open with this sentence: “This report summarizes the broadband speeds and coverage that ISPs report to us. We have no way to know if any of these claims are true”.
Anybody who digs into the FCC data knows it’s terrible, but it’s impossible to know how bad it is. We get clues every time somebody takes a stab at developing a more accurate broadband map. The State of Georgia undertook a mapping effort and in July identified 507,000 homes in the state that don’t have access to 25/3 broadband. That number was 255,000 homes higher than what was shown by the FCC. If that same ratio holds everywhere in the country, then there are twice as many homes without broadband than what the FCC cites in the NOI. I think in many western states that the FCC data is even worse than what Georgia found.
What I find most troublesome about the NOI is that the FCC is planning to stick to the definition of broadband as 25/3 Mbps. It’s easy to understand why the agency wants to keep this speed as the definition of broadband. If the agency increases the definition of broadband, then overnight a whole lot more homes would be declared to not have good broadband. That would completely kill the FCC’s narrative that they are doing great work and closing the digital divide.
The FCC’s cited statistics argue against 25/3 Mbps as the right definition of broadband. Consider the statement above which says that 85% of homes have access to 250/25 Mbps broadband. If that is true, then almost by definition, the FCC’s should define broadband at least at 250/25 Mbps. After all, the FCC’s mandate from Congress is to measure and close the gap between urban and rural broadband. If urban broadband can deliver 250/25 Mbps to everybody, then by the Congressional mandate the speeds available urban America should be the target for rural America. To keep the definition at 25/3 Mbps is ignoring market reality – that most of the people in the country now have speeds far faster than the FCC’s obsolete definition of broadband. And perhaps worse of all, the FCC is drawing this conclusion based upon 2018 data. We know that homes are using roughly 50% more broadband today today than what they used in 2018.