Monthly Archives: August 2023

The Wireless Innovation Fund

Practically everybody in the country has a cellphone, and mobile communication is now a huge part of the daily life of people and key to a huge amount of the economy. But as we found out during the pandemic, key parts of the economy, like the cellphone market, are susceptible to supply chain issues. The U.S. cellphone industry is particularly susceptible to market forces since the industry is dominated by a small number of manufacturers.

One of the many programs funded by recent legislation is the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Plan that was funded by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. This program is being implemented with $1.5 billion to award for grants that explore ways to support open and interoperable 5G wireless networks.

The specific goals of the grant fund are to provide grants that will:

  • Accelerate commercial deployment of open, interoperable equipment;
  • Promote compatibility of new 5G equipment;
  • Allow the integration of multiple vendors into the wireless network environments;
  • Identify the criteria needed to define equipment as compliant with open standards;
  • Promote and deploy security features and network function virtualization for multiple vendors, interoperable networks.

All of this equates to opening the cellular network to multiple new U.S. vendors. That will make the cellular networks far less susceptible to foreign supply chain problems while also creating new U.S. jobs. There is also the additional goal of increasing the security of our wireless networks. This is all being done in conjunction with the other provisions of the CHIPS Act, that have already resulted in over fifty projects to build chips in the U.S.

There have already been 127 applications for grants from the fund that total to $1.39 billion. There have been three grants announced, with many more to come. The first three grants are:

Northeastern University for $1.99 million to develop an accurate testing platform to enable the construction of sustainable and energy-efficient wireless networks.

New York University for $2 million to develop testing and evaluation procedures for open and secure adaptive spectrum sharing for 5G and beyond.

DeepSig Inc. for $1.49 million to dramatically improve the fidelity, speed, and repeatability of OpenRAN air-interface performance testing using an AI model to set new standards and tools to revolutionize the evaluation of interoperable ORAN in real world conditions.

I’ve always believed that the government should take the lead on directed research of this type. I’m sure some of the ideas being funded won’t pan out, but the point of directed research is to uncover ideas that make it into the next generation of deployed technology. I’d love to see something similar done for ISP technologies. I hope this is not a one-time grant program because funding this kind of research every year is one of the best ways to keep the U.S. at the forefront of both wireless and broadband technology – using American technology.

Virginia’s Proposed BEAD Grant Rules

Virginia just published its draft BEAD proposal that defines how the state plans to make BEAD grant awards. Virginia will be awarding almost $1.5 billion in BEAD grants using these rules. The plan is still a draft. Next is a public comment period on the proposed rules, and the final draft of the plan will have to be approved by the NTIA. But even as a draft, this is my first real peek into how the BEAD grants might happen. Note that each state is a distinct plan, and some of the features in the Virginia rules might not be in other state plans. This summary is from my first quick reading of the Virginia plan, so forgive me if I missed important nuances.

Following are some of the most interesting things about the Virginia plan:

  • Virginia plans to ‘deconflict’ multiple grants that ask to serve the same geographic area by requiring all grant applicants to file a pre-application that defines the areas they plan to serve. This will allow the state to determine distinct application areas before the full grants are due. The plan discusses a secondary process to find ISPs to serve areas where nobody has asked for grant funding.
  • Virginia plans to post everything filed by ISPs online. One of the biggest complaints about many past grants is that the process was done behind closed doors. It looks like Virginia is going to make everything available to the public. It will be interesting to see if they will allow for things like financial information to be kept confidential.
  • Virginia has a goal of awarding all of its BEAD money in 2024. I read this to mean that there will be only two grant steps – every applicant will file a pre-application with maps, and once the State has digested the maps, ISPs file the full application – this means one big grant round for everybody at the same time.
  • I think folks are going to be intrigued by the grant scoring. It’s different than any other grant I can recall. Virginia has two slightly different scoring plans, and here is the first one:
    • 45% for Program Outlay. This is essentially a one-round reverse auction. If more than one ISP asks to serve the same area, the ISP with the lowest cost per passing will get the full 45 points, and other applicants will get fewer points based on how much more they are requesting from the grant program. This has to be a concern for anybody who is thinking of asking for a full 75% grant.
    • 20% for Affordability. This is going to be based on the proposed price for a symmetrical gigabit of service. To get points, the price must be at or below $100. Prices are compared between applicants asking to serve the same area.
    • 10% for Fair Labor Practices. This will be based on the history and the proposed commitment to compliance with Federal labor and employment laws.
    • 5% for Speed of Deployment. Timelines for construction will be compared after accounting for delays such as complying with things like environmental studies.
    • 10% for a Local Consulting Meeting. An ISP must meet with local or tribal governments to explain its qualifications and plans for deploying BEAD.
    • 10% for Local Letter of Support. This requirement gives a lot of power to local governments. A government that only supports one ISP gives that applicant a big boost in grant scoring
  • All of the other BEAD requirements are not part of the scoring. Instead, it seems there will be a checklist of mandatory requirements. This includes a long list of BEAD requirements like environmental studies, extremely high-cost area plans, the technology being used, the letter of credit, the history and capability of the ISP, binding commitments from labor, credentialed workforce, affirmative action for vendors, climate plan, middle-class rate plan, cybersecurity, supply chain management, etc.

Since it’s hard to imagine an applicant not holding the local meetings, the rest of the scoring is a 90-point scale. Half of the grant scoring comes from the willingness to take the lowest level of grant funding. The next important is affordable rates. The local letter of recommendation takes on a high importance.

Since everything is going to be published and transparent, Virginia’s scoring plan seems to eliminate almost all discretion from the state grant office in choosing winners. I read this scoring to say that whoever gets the most points in a given grant area will win the grant.

It’s impossible to tell with these high-level rules how scoring will account for differences between ISPs. For example, how will these rules account for technologies that deliver different speeds? I assume before grants are due that the scoring will be explained in more detail.

These rules also open other big questions. Will there be a chance for a local community to prove that the FCC maps are still wrong, or will grant applicants be limited to asking for grants for areas shown as unserved and underserved on the latest FCC map?

In closing, note again that these are the proposed rules for Virginia – but no other state. Other states might use a totally different philosophy for scoring. I know there are states that are considering multiple rounds of grant applications. These rules are also a draft and could change in Virginia before they are final. But this is one view of how the BEAD grants will work – and it’s totally different than what I expected.

A Tale of Two Markets

I wrote a blog the other day that got me thinking about the huge disparity in regulating two distinct but highly intertwined industries – broadband and voice. Before you stop reading because you might think voice is no longer relevant, voice regulation includes the cellular business, and in terms of revenue, the voice market is larger than broadband. JD Powers reported in April of this year that the average household is spending $144 for cellular per month.

I call these industries intertwined because the players at the top of both industries are the same. The big ISPs are Comcast, Charter, AT&T, and Verizon. The biggest voice players are AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Comcast and Charter are making aggressive moves to develop a wireless business, and T-Mobile is aggressively selling broadband.

The two markets are intertwined in a household. Most people connect their cell phones directly to landline broadband when they are home. The primary use for cell phones is to connect to the Internet. My twenty-something daughter is amazed that I predominantly use my cell phone to actually talk to people.

This handful of giant companies control the lion’s shares of both the voice and broadband industries. Yet we’ve decided to regulate the two business lines completely differently. You must admit that this it’s an odd national decision to regulate AT&T’s voice business but not its broadband business, particularly considering how intertwined the two businesses are. Comcast and Charter are proof of the link between the two industries since the companies will only sell cellular plans to customers who are buying broadband.

A regulatory expert from another country would look at the U.S. regulatory environment with incredulity. They would instantly wonder how we can treat the two industries so differently since they engage in such similar business lines, particularly since the same companies lead both markets.

The average American has no idea of how differently we treat the two industries and would be just as confused as a foreign regulator expert. It’s really hard to explain the difference in regulations since that quickly devolves into a discussion of things like Title II regulation, and the average person listening will quickly have no idea what you are talking about.

The easiest way to explain the difference in regulation is that we don’t regulate according to common sense but base regulation on the original legislation that established regulations for each industry. Voice is still regulated because, in the past, various pieces of federal legislation, like the Telecommunications Act of 1996, specifically mention voice. There were also laws that specifically defined how to regulate cable TV – but there has never been a definitive legislative declaration that broadband must be regulated.

This all started when interest in home broadband mushroomed. AOL, CompuServe, and others created a robust ISP industry that took off rapidly when DSL and cable modems increased speed to the point that people could do useful things with broadband. In those early days, there was a lot of discussion about regulating broadband, but the consensus among legislators was that regulators should leave the fledgling new broadband industry alone until it grew large enough. No doubt, this hands-off approach was whispered into the ears of legislators by lobbyists for the big ISPs.

With no direction from Congress, the FCC and various States tried to find ways to regulate broadband over the last few decades. But as hard as it is to believe, we weren’t even able to define what broadband is without legislative direction – is broadband a telecommunications service or an information service? All of the wrangling about regulating broadband ultimately comes down to this simple designation.

Regulation gets really bizarre the deeper you go into the details. Cell phones calls are regulated for voice, but the broadband on a cellphone is considered to be an information service. What is the regulatory regime of a cell phone call that is handed off to a broadband network through WiFi but then eventually reconnected with the cellular network? The average cell phone user regularly bounces between regulated and unregulated functions.

The title of the blog refers to A Tale of Two Cities, which opened with, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”. That’s as good of a description of our odd regulatory environment as anything else I can think of.

If BEAD Isn’t Enough

There are several States already estimating that the BEAD grant funding is not going to be enough money to reach all of the unserved and underserved areas. California, New Mexico, and Minnesota have estimated that BEAD will fall short. By the time the dust settles there will likely be more states.

I’m not surprised by this. Just since the BEAD grant program was enacted by the Infrastructure Investment and Job Act in November 2021, there have been some significant cost increases for building broadband networks. Network design engineers are telling me that costs have gone up in most places by 20% to 25% over the last two years. Part of this comes from inflation, which has driven up the cost of materials and labor. But a lot of the increase comes from perceived labor shortages in the industry, which has prompted construction contractors to raise prices faster than inflation.

The BEAD grant process also adds significant costs in some markets. I’ve done the analysis in some states where having to pay prevailing wages will increase the cost of a network by 10% to 15%. BEAD has other requirements that add significant cost. For many smaller ISPs the cost of obtaining a letter of credit is going to be expensive. There are environmental studies required for grant projects that add costs.

The various cost increases mean that BEAD funding won’t cover nearly as many locations as might have been supposed by whoever determined that $42.5 billion was enough money. As unbelievable as it sounds, we might have needed a BEAD pool of $60 billion or more to provide the same coverage as $42.5 billion in 2021 construction costs.

I think the problem is a lot larger than folks suppose because all of these estimates begin with the assumption that the FCC broadband maps are accurate. I think grant offices are going to be jammed with grant applications where ISPs and communities demonstrate the maps are wrong and the supposed FCC coverage doesn’t exist. I’m also coming to realize that there are a lot more underserved places in urban areas than are shown on the FCC maps.

There are also going to be grant projects that fail. The NTIA rules have gone far overboard to try to prevent failure, but we only have to look at the two-year-old RDOF program to see ISPs saying they can’t afford to build the projects with the funding they received. Some BEAD projects are going to take four years to build, and that’s four years of inflation eating away at the value of the grant.

Where might the money come from to cover these shortages? There are several possibilities:

  • There might be other grant programs that can plug some of the holes. For example, the Agriculture bill pending in the House and Senate has more funding for the USDA ReConnect grants. Hopefully, the USDA will change the rules a bit because ReConnect grants are not currently friendly to grant areas consisting of disjointed pockets of serving areas. Unfortunately, in much of the country, that’s what the remaining unserved areas look like on a map – scattered unserved pockets between areas built with other grants.
  • It’s always possible for the FCC to have another round of RDOF. I have to wonder if it learned any lessons from the first round of RDOF? Is there any hope that the FCC would give money to states rather than hold another reverse auction? Also, RDOF and other federal programs are also going to struggle if they insist on only funding areas identified on the FCC maps rather than areas that really need broadband.
  • Congress could always step up – but that seems like a remote possibility in the current dysfunctional Congress. Hopefully, if Congress provides the funding, it will give the money to the States again.
  • State legislators could come up with the funding. However, the vast majority of State funding in the last few years came from CARES and ARPA funding. The level of state broadband funding before those programs was relatively small. I remember joking with folks in Minnesota that the State’s broadband grant program at $20 million per year was a hundred-year plan to bring broadband everywhere.

Broadband Customers 2Q 2023

Leichtman Research Group recently released broadband customer statistics for the end of the second quarter of 2023 for the largest cable and telephone companies. Leichtman compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders other than for Cox and Mediacom, which are estimated, and now reported together. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all US landline broadband customers.

The first quarter of the year shows a continuation of the trend where all of the growth in broadband is coming from T-Mobile and Verizon FWA fixed cellular wireless. Those two companies added 903,000 customers, while the rest of the ISPs collectively lost over 52,000 customers.

2Q 2023 1Q 2023 1Q Change % Change
Comcast 32,305,000 32,324,000 (19,000) -0.1%
Charter 30,586,000 30,509,000 77,000 0.3%
AT&T 15,304,000 15,345,000 (41,000) -0.3%
Verizon 7,562,000 7,528,000 34,000 0.5%
Cox & Mediacom 7,035,000 7,035,000 0 0.0%
Altice 4,576,100 4,612,700 (36,600) -0.8%
T-Mobile FWA 3,678,000 3,169,000 509,000 16.1%
Lumen 2,909,000 2,981,000 (72,000) -2.4%
Frontier 2,865,000 2,863,000 2,000 0.1%
Verizon FWA 2,260,000 1,866,000 394,000 21.1%
Windstream 1,175,000 1,175,000 0 0.0%
Cable ONE 1,057,900 1,063,000 (5,100) -0.5%
Breezeline 680,785 687,519 (6,734) -1.0%
TDS 523,600 515,400 8,200 1.6%
Consolidated 376,829 369,862 6,967 1.9%
Total 112,894,214 112,043,481 850,733 0.8%
Cable 76,240,785 76,231,219 9,566 0.0%
Telco 30,715,429 30,777,262 (61,833) -0.2%
FWA 5,938,000 5,035,000 903,000 17.9%

The telcos collectively lost almost 62,000 customers in the quarter despite gains from Verizon FiOS, TDS, and Consolidated of 49,000 customers for the quarter. The biggest loser was Lumen, losing 72,000 broadband customers.

The only cable company with positive growth was Charter – its strategy of expanding its footprint into rural areas is clearly paying off.

It’s hard to see from these numbers where the huge growth of FWA wireless broadband is coming from. Much of the FWA growth is coming in rural markets where the competition is fixed wireless and satellite service. But FWA pricing seems to be aimed squarely at competing with DSL and probably counts for the overall losses for AT&T and Lumen. Both companies are adding fiber customers and are losing DSL customers more quickly than indicated by the overall numbers. I’m sure AT&T hates the loss of DSL revenue, but competition from FWA makes it that much easier for the company to eventually walk away from rural copper.

 

Increasing the ACP Subsidy

I’m puzzled by the recent change to the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The FCC recently implemented an increase in the monthly ACP subsidy in qualifying high-cost areas from $30 to $75. The reason for the change is easy to understand – this was codified in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act legislation. The legislation required higher ACP payments be higher in  areas of the country designated as high-cost.

The NTIA has been working with State Broadband Offices to designate the high-cost areas in each state – because such areas are also eligible for special treatment and consideration in the upcoming BEAD grants. Now that high-cost areas are being defined, the FCC can implement the legislatively mandated ACP change.

What puzzles me is why this was in the legislation. The concept seems to be that areas with higher costs need additional support. To quote the recent FCC order on the increase, “the $75 monthly benefit would support providers that can demonstrate that the standard $30 monthly benefit would cause them to experience “particularized economic hardship” such that they would be unable to maintain part or all of their broadband network in a high-cost area”.

I agree with the concept that areas with particularly high costs might need some kind of broadband subsidy. For example, this is a big piece of the rationale for subsidy programs like ACAM.

But the extra ACP subsidy doesn’t help ISPs. ISPs use the ACP program to discount customer rates and then get reimbursed for the customer discount from the ACP funding provided by Congress. Whether the discount is $30 or $75, this is a net wash for the ISP. None of this support goes to the ISP and all of the benefit flows directly to the customer. It appears to me that the folks who wrote the legislation thought the ACP benefits ISPs and not low-income households.

I have a hard time rationalizing why this extra discount is only given in high-cost areas. Isn’t a low-income household located elsewhere just as worthy of extra help?

I guess you can make the argument that having a larger discount will make it easier to add more low-income customers to the network – and that would improve revenues for a rural ISP.

But realistically, having a higher customer discount also puts an ISP at greater risk if the ACP subsidy ever stops. The ACP discount only applies to customers who can demonstrate they are low-income or that they take part in one of several social programs. If a customer is getting free broadband because of a $75 ACP subsidy, is that customer going to be able to suddenly start paying for broadband if the ACP subsidy ends? That’s a valid question to ask since it looks like the ACP fund will run out of money some time in the second quarter of next year.

This extra subsidy would a little make more sense if ACP was a permanently funded program. But it seems like a rural ISP can be badly harmed if it relies on ACP and suddenly loses a lot of customers if the ACP fund runs dry.

I’m sure that the folks who drafted this requirement had good intentions, and some of the envisioned benefit might materialize if ACP is permanently funded. With a permanent ACP, ISPs in high-cost areas could justify making the effort to connect low-income households to broadband. But I have to advise ISPs not to aggressively pursue getting folks connected to the $75 ACP subsidy because the ISP stands to lose most such customers if the ACP program ends. There is a fixed cost to add a new customer to the network, and an ISP adding a new customer today won’t even recover that initial cost if the ACP subsidy ends early next year.

Perhaps the folks who inserted this language into the IIJA assumed that ACP would be so beneficial that Congress would permanently fund it past the end of the IIJA funding. But unless that commitment is made soon by Congress, I find it impossible to advise small ISPs to enroll new ACP customers.

DOCSIS 4.0 vs. Fiber

Comcast and Charter previously announced that they intend to upgrade cable networks to DOCSIS 4.0 to be able to better compete against fiber networks. The goal is to be able to offer faster download speeds and drastically improve upload speeds to level the playing field with fiber in terms of advertised speeds. It’s anybody’s guess if these upgrades will make cable broadband equivalent to fiber in consumers’ eyes.

From a marketing perspective, there are plenty of people who see no difference between symmetrical gigabit broadband offered by a cable company or a fiber overbuilder. However, a lot of the public has already become convinced that fiber is superior. AT&T and a few other big telcos say they quickly get a 30% market share when they bring fiber to a neighborhood, and telcos claim aspirations of reaching a 50% market share within 3-4 years.

At least a few big cable companies believe fiber is better. Cox is in the process of overbuilding fiber in some of its largest markets. Altice has built fiber in about a third of its markets. What’s not talked about much is that cable companies have the same ability to overlash fiber on existing coaxial cables in the same way that telcos can overlash onto copper cables. It costs Cox a lot less to bring fiber to a neighborhood than a fiber overbuilder that can’t overlash onto existing wires.

From a technical perspective, engineers and broadband purists will tell you that fiber delivers a better broadband signal. A few years back, I witnessed a side-by-side comparison of fiber and coaxial broadband delivered by ISPs. Although the subscribed download speeds being delivered were the same, the fiber connection felt cleaner and faster to the eye. There are several technical reasons for the difference.

  • The fiber signal has far less latency. Latency is a delay in getting bits delivered on a broadband signal. Higher latency means that a smaller percentage of bits get delivered on the first attempt. The impact of latency is most noticeable when viewing live sporting events where the signal is sent to be viewed without having received all of the transmitted bits – and this is seen to the eye as pixelation or less clarity of picture.
  • Fiber also has much less jitter. This is the variability of the signal from second to second. A fiber system generally delivers broadband signals on time, while the nuances of a copper network cause minor delay and glitches. As one example, a coaxial copper network acts like a giant radio antenna and as such, picks up stray signals that enter the network and can disrupt the broadband signal. Disruptions inside a fiber network are comparatively minor and usually come from small flaws in the fiber caused during installation or later damage.

The real question that will have to be answered in the marketplace is if cable companies can reverse years of public perception that fiber is better. They have their work cut out for them. Fiber overbuilders today tell me that they rarely lose a customer who returns to the cable company competitor. Even if the cable networks get much better, people are going to remember when they used to struggle on cable holding a zoom call.

Before the cable companies can make the upgrade to DOCSIS 4.0, which is still a few years away, the big cable companies are planning to upgrade upload speeds in some markets using a technology referred to as a mid-split. This will allocate more broadband to the upload path. It will be interesting to see if that is enough of an upgrade to stop people from leaving for fiber. I think cable companies are scared of seeing a mass migration to fiber in some neighborhoods because they understand how hard it will be to win people back. Faster upload speeds may fix the primary issue that people don’t like about cable broadband, but will it be enough to compete with fiber? It’s going to be an interesting marketing battle.

Protecting Broadband Customer Data

At the end of July, the FCC proposed a $20 million penalty against Q Link and Hello Mobile for not complying with the Customer Propriety Network Information (CPNI). The FCC concluded that the two companies violated the CPNI rules when they failed to protect confidential user data. The companies both had security flaws in their apps that allowed outside access to customer account information.

Today’s blog is not talking about these two carriers, but their security measures must be terrible to invite fines of that magnitude. Today’s blog will use these fines to highlight that there are still stringent privacy rules in place for voice providers, but nothing similar for broadband. Other than perhaps invoking an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission for allowing leaks of broadband customer information, there are no specific prohibitions in place to stop ISPs from misusing customer data.

There is an interesting history of regulations for the protection of broadband customer information. The FCC, under Chairman Tom Wheeler, had implemented CPNI rules for broadband in 2016 along with other broadband regulations like net neutrality. These regulations went into effect near the end of 2016 and included a provision to allow customers to opt in or out of allowing an ISP to use and share their personal data.

In 2017, Congress eliminated the CPNI protections for broadband in response to a request by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. Pai argued that it wasn’t fair to enforce privacy rules on big ISPs that weren’t also required for web companies like Google and Facebook. He also argued that CPNI rules made no sense after the Pai FCC had eliminated Title II regulation, which had declared that broadband is considered to be an information service and not a telecommunications service. Congress passed the Congressional Rule Act that eliminated the CPNI requirement along with other broadband regulations, and the FCC implemented the change in September 2017.

This has resulted in an unusual regulatory environment where two cellular carriers can be heavily penalized for not protecting customer data while ISPs cannot.

Telephone companies routinely capture details of customer calling – who you call and who calls you. This is familiar to anybody who’s seen a TV crime show since one of the first things detectives routinely do is to ask to see telephone calling records for a suspect. Telephone companies can’t release this information without a warrant. CPNI rules also require phone companies to keep other customer data secure, such as billing records, credit card numbers, etc. Telephone companies are even prohibited from marketing their own products to customers if a customer opts out of such marketing.

The 2016 privacy rules that were in place for only a short time implemented the same sort of privacy rules as voice, but customers were also given the choice to allow or deny access to their records. ISPs gather a lot more data about customers than telephone companies. For example, an ISP knows every web page you have visited since they control the DNS routing that connects you to websites. There are numerous other things an ISP can know about a customer if they choose to look deeper into the packets between users and websites.

ISPs I know aren’t worried about these issues because they don’t share customer information. They don’t record details of customer broadband transactions, and they try hard to keep information like credit card numbers safe from hackers. But I don’t think anybody believes the largest ISPs when they say that they don’t monetize information from customer data, particularly since, with current rules, there is no restriction against them doing so. The big ISPs don’t want any restrictions on what they do with customer data and any revenue streams that might come from selling data, and in today’s regulatory world, they are largely getting what they want.

The Future of Broadband Maps

I read that an AI expert at a workshop hosted by the FCC and the U.S. National Science Foundation suggested that AI could be used to produce better broadband maps. I had to chuckle at that idea.

The primary reason for my amusement is that FCC maps are created from self-reported broadband coverage and speeds by the many ISPs in the country. ISPs have a variety of motivations for how and why they report data to the FCC. Some ISPs try to report accurate speeds and coverage. People may be surprised by this, but some of the biggest telcos, like CenturyLink and Frontier, seem to have gotten better at reporting DSL speeds – in some markets, you can find DSL capability being reported at a dozen different speeds to reflect that DSL speeds vary by the distance from the central office.

Other ISPs take the exact opposite approach and report marketing speeds that are far in excess of the capability of the technology being deployed. It’s not hard to find WISPs claiming 100 Mbps to 300 Mbps download capability when they are delivering speeds in the 10 Mbps to 30 Mbps range. My guess is that some of these ISPs are using the FCC maps as an advertisement to get customers to call them after looking at the FCC map. Some ISPs have already been accused of over-reporting speeds to try to block grant money from overbuilding them.

There are also endless examples of ISPs reporting coverage that doesn’t exist. The FCC mapping rules say that only locations that can be served within ten business days should be included in broadband coverage areas, and many ISPs are claiming much larger areas than they can serve quickly. Even worse, some ISPs claim coverage in areas that they can’t serve, such as when WISPs claim coverage of homes that are blocked from line-of-sight by hills or other impediments.

The only way that AI could be used to improve the maps is if the FCC gets serious about mapping and changes some rules, and enforces others. The FCC would have to eliminate the ability of ISPs to claim marketing speeds, which provides easy cover for overstating capabilities. The FCC would also have to get serious about enforcing coverage to meet the 10-day installation rule. If those two changes were made and enforced, the FCC might be able to use AI to improve the maps. AI could match claimed ISP coverage to speed test data and also reference and compare coverage to complaints and challenges from consumers. I don’t see the FCC ever being willing to get that aggressive with ISPs – because this process would be extremely contentious.

I don’t believe any of this will ever happen because after the wave of BEAD funding is finally spent, the FCC and everybody else is going to lose interest in the broadband maps. Nobody will care if some ISP overstates capabilities in an area as long as the BEAD winner is going to bring faster broadband.

There are already a number of State Broadband offices that are saying that the BEAD allocations are not going to be enough to fix broadband everywhere. My prediction is that states that care about fixing the remaining places will create their own broadband maps and will go back to ignoring the FCC maps.

The FCC won’t care. At the point where they can say with a straight face that 95% of homes will be be able to buy broadband that meets the FCC’s definition of broadband, the FCC is going to declare job done. For the last decade, the FCC has issued annual broadband reports to Congress that have said that the state of broadband is good and improving – all based upon maps that everybody knew were grossly overstated in both broadband speeds and coverage. I can’t see the FCC putting extra effort into proving that there are still homes left without good broadband.

New FCC Role – Device Security

Depending upon the survey you believe, U.S. homes have an average of thirteen to twenty-two connected devices in their home. That can range from computers, TVs, security cameras, game boxes, baby monitors – it’s a huge list these days.  A concern for anybody with connected devices is that somebody will hack them and cause problems in the home. I’ve seen many articles that describe how people have hacked home cameras to watch families or hijacked computers for various nefarious reasons.

The White House announced a new initiative in July that would create a certification for connected devices that meet cyber safety standards. The authority to handle this program was given to the FCC. Being labeled as the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, device makers can send devices to the FCC to be certified as meeting basic security standards. This is similar to the Energy Star efficiency sticker that comes with home appliances.

This is a voluntary program for device makers, but the hope is that companies will seek the approval label to be able to more easily market their products.

The next step for the FCC will be to open a rulemaking to determine the devices that are eligible for the certification and the standards that must be met. During the announcement of the initiative, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel mentioned devices that might apply, like smart refrigerators, microwaves, thermostats, fitness trackers, and baby monitors. It’s likely that many other kinds of devices will be added to the list. The FCC says it will work closely with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create the cyber standards.

NIST has developed a Profile of the IoT Core Baseline for Consumer IoT Products. That NIST document says that connected devices should have features like the following:

  • A clear way to identify the specific device, such as a device serial number.
  • The ability to change the configuration of a device and to be able to reset it to the default security settings.
  • Devices should protect stored data and encrypt or otherwise secure transmitted data.
  • A device should give access to settings only to authorized users.
  • A device should have the ability to receive, verify, and apply software updates.
  • A device should be cybersecurity aware and have the ability to detect and capture evidence of any changes to software or security settings.
  • Manufacturers of connected devices should have full documentation of the security measures present.
  • The product developer should be able to receive and respond to queries about cybersecurity from device users.

Security experts have been making similar recommendations for many years and have requested that the government create and enforce standards. Since Congress has never passed a law about device security, a voluntary process sounds like a good first step to get this started.

Chairman Rosenworcel said she hoped the agency could develop standards by the end of 2024. The proceeding to determine how this should work ought to be interesting reading.

Like with everything at the FCC, I have to wonder how this gets funded. I would expect that the fees charged to those seeking the certification would cover the cost.