The good news is that there is a way to monitor what the big telcos are reporting to the FCC in terms of areas that have seen the CAF II upgrades. This web site provides a map that reports progress on several different FCC broadband plans. The map covers reported progress for the following programs:
- CAF II – This was the $11 billion subsidy to big telcos to improve rural broadband to at least 10/1 Mbps.
- CAF II BLS – This was Broadband Loop support that was made available to small telcos. Not entirely sure why the FCC is tracking this using a map.
- ACAM – This is a subsidy given to smaller telcos to improve broadband to at least 25/3 Mbps, but which many are using to build gigabit fiber.
- The Alaska Plan. This is the Alaska version of ACAM. Alaska is extremely high cost and has a separate broadband subsidy plan.
- RBE – These are the Experimental Broadband Grants from 2015.
Participants in each of these programs must report GIS data for locations that have been upgraded, and those upgraded sites are then shown on the map at this site. There is, of course, some delay between the time of completing upgrades and getting information onto this map. It’s now been 4.5 years into the six-year CAF II plan, and the carriers have told the FCC that many of the required upgrades are completed. All CAF II upgrades must be finished by the end of 2020 – and likely most will be completed sometime earlier next year during the summer construction season that dictates construction in much of the country.
The map is easy to use. For example, if you change the ‘Fund’ box at the upper right of the map to CAF II, then all of the areas that were supposed to get CAF II upgrades are shown in light purple. In these areas, the big telcos were supposed to upgrade every residence and business to be able to receive 10/1 Mbps or better broadband.
The map allows you to drill down into more specific detail. For example, if you want to see how CenturyLink performed on CAF II, then choose CenturyLink in the ‘Company Name’ box. This will place a pin on the map for all of the locations that CenturyLink has reported as complete. As you zoom in on the map the upgraded locations will show as dark purple dots. You can zoom in on the map to the point of seeing many local road names.
The map has an additional feature that many will want to see. Down on the left bottom of the map under ‘Boundaries’ you can set political boundaries like County borders.
Most counties are really interested in the information shown on the map. The map shows the areas that were supposed to see upgrades along with areas that have been upgraded to date. This information is vital to counties for a number of reasons. For example, new federal grants and most state grant programs rely on this data to determine if an area is eligible for additional funding. For example, the current $600 million Re-Connect grants can’t be used for areas where more than 10% of homes already have 10/1 Mbps broadband. Any areas on this map that have the purple dots will probably have a hard time qualifying for these grants. The big telcos will likely try to disqualify any grant requests that build where they say they have upgraded.
Probably the most important use of the map is as a starting point for counties to gather accurate data about broadband. For example, you might want to talk to folks that live in the upgraded areas to see if they can really now buy 10/1 Mbps DSL. My guess is that many of the areas shown on these maps as having CAF II upgrades are still going to have download speeds less than 10/1 Mbps. If you find that to be the case I recommend documenting your findings because areas that didn’t get a full upgrade should be eligible for future grant funding.
It’s common knowledge that rural copper has been ignored for decades, often with no routine maintenance. It’s not surprising to anybody who has worked in a DSL environment that many rural lines are incapable of carrying faster DSL. It’s not easy for a big telco to bring 10/1 Mbps broadband over bad copper lines, but unfortunately, it’s easy for them to tell the FCC that the upgrades have been done, even if the speed is not really there.
This map is just one more piece of the puzzle and one more tool for rural counties to use to understand their current broadband situation. For example, it’s definitely a plus if the big telcos really upgraded DSL in these areas to at least 10/1 Mbps – many of these areas had no DSL or incredibly slow DSL before. On the flip side, if the big telcos are exaggerating about these upgrades and the speeds aren’t there, they are going to likely block your region from getting future grant money to upgrade to real broadband. The big telcos have every incentive to lie to protect their DSL and telephone revenues in these remote areas. What’s not tolerable is for the big telcos to use incorrect mapping data to deny homes from getting better broadband.