I’m working with several small cities that were recently notified that the existing cable company plans to upgrade the network. In these cities, the cable company still operates a DOCSIS 3.0 network. The networks have download speeds a little faster than 100 Mbps, and upload speeds are under 10 Mbps. These cities are currently considered to be underserved and are eligible for BEAD grants.

I talked to the State Broadband Offices in several states about the issue of announced upgrades coming just in front of the final BEAD map challenges. I was told that this is suddenly a common issue, and they are seeing claims of upcoming upgrades across their state. This is not just coming from cable companies, but there are telcos now claiming DSL speeds faster than 100 Mbps and licensed wireless providers claiming that fast speeds will be coming soon.

Apparently, this is so common that it has come to the attention of the NTIA. These State offices told me that NTIA is recommending that States only make mapping changes for promised upgrades if an ISP will sign a binding contract with the state that the upgrades are coming soon and are guaranteed to meet the faster speeds. Two of the state offices I talked to said that they will further require that ISPs agree to make any promised upgrades in the next twelve months. If an ISP doesn’t make the contractual guarantee, then the state will keep the areas as BEAD eligible.

This is not a new situation. Just before the FCC published the eligibility map for RDOF, CenturyLink and Frontier each changed the FCC maps to reflect tens of thousands of Census blocks that they suddenly claimed had speeds of 25/3 Mbps or faster. That would have removed these places from the RDOF auction. The FCC rejected the claims from both telcos and included all of the Census blocks in the RDOF reverse auction.

Part of this issue comes is due to the FCC mapping rules about how ISPs are allowed to claim broadband speeds. ISPs are allowed to declare marketing speeds instead of actual speeds. There is nothing to stop an ISP from declaring a speed capability of 100/20 Mbps but deliver something slower – maybe even a lot slower. This puts the responsibility on a community to somehow prove that actual speeds are slower than the claims – and anybody who has challenged speeds in the FCC maps knows how difficult that can be.

If your City or County is currently BEAD eligible and you are told by ISPs that upgrades are coming soon, you should talk to your State broadband office. It’s also possible that you won’t be notified of upgrades and that ISP will instead make these claims in the BEAD grant challenges that many states hope to begin in the first quarter.

The claims of upgrades could be real. A cable company that upgrades to DOCSIS 3.1 will be bringing gigabit speeds to the network. But the worst possible scenario is for an ISP to claim an upcoming upgrade to eliminate the BEAD funding and then make no upgrade. There is certainly a chance that some of these claims are just like when Frontier and CenturyLink tried to eliminate areas from RDOF. Cities and counties need to be vigilant during the map challenges to see if ISPs are suddenly claiming fast speeds that don’t exist or claiming pending upgrades.

Another situation to watch is for ISPs that only upgrade a part of a community. Many ISPS are not bringing fiber to an entire community. A city that gets fiber in half of a town will be glad to see the upgrade, but this creates a new digital divide when the other half of the community doesn’t get fiber. Anybody who has spent a lot of time looking at the FCC broadband maps has seen plenty of examples of partial fiber upgrades. There are no rules stopping an ISP from cherry-picking in this manner, but it creates a new set of problems for a community when half of a town still has inferior broadband. It’s something that big cities have seen for years, but it’s becoming common in smaller communities.