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The Industry

Trusting Big ISP Data

The FCC has finally come to grips with the fact that big ISPs are supplying bad data to the various FCC mapping efforts that are then used to distribute FCC funding and to set national policies. The latest mapping snafu come from one-time data collection from the cellular carriers last year showing rural cellular coverage. These maps were to be used to establish a new federal fund called the Mobility Fund II which will distribute $4.53 billion for the expansion of 4G cellular coverage to rural parts of the country that have little or no cellular coverage.

The big cellular companies have been lying about their cellular coverage for years. If you look at the nationwide 4G LTE coverage maps from AT&T and Verizon you’d think that they have cellular coverage virtually everywhere except in areas like deserts and mountains. But anybody living or traveling in rural America knows better. It’s not hard to drive very far off main highways and hit areas that never see a bar of cellular coverage. And even where there is coverage, it’s still often 3G or even older technology.

When the FCC collected data for the Mobility II funding the big carriers stuck to this same flawed mapping data. It turns out that overclaiming rural cellular coverage will keep funding from going to the smaller cellular companies that still serve in many parts of rural America. Luckily the FCC effort included a challenge process and the FCC was flooded with challenges showing that cellular coverage is far worse than is claimed by the big carrier maps. There were so many challenges that the FCC put the Mobility II award process on hold until they can sort it out.

This is just one of the mapping efforts from the FCC that have been used to award billions of dollars of funding over the last decade. The FCC relied on mapping data from the big telcos to establish the areas that were eligible for the billions of dollars of CAF II funding.

Since rural areas served by the biggest telcos have been neglected for years, and since the big telcos deployed very little rural DSL outside of towns it’s not hard to identify huge swaths of rural areas that have little or no broadband. But the big telco broadband coverage data contains a ton of inaccuracies. For example, there are numerous smaller rural towns that are listed in the telco databases as having decent broadband, when the reality on the ground is broadband speeds of a few Mbps at best. It looks like the big telcos often reported marketing speeds rather than actual speeds. This inaccuracy has stopped others from seeking federal grants and loans to upgrade such towns.

I fear that rural broadband mapping is on the verge of the next crisis. As a blogger I am contacted a lot by folks in rural America describing their broadband situation. I’ve heard enough stories to convince me that the big telcos have made only a half-hearted effort at implementing CAF II. I think many homes that should have seen CAF II broadband upgrades will see zero upgrades while many others will get upgraded to speeds that don’t meet even the measly CAF II goal of 10/1 Mbps.

The big telcos are not likely to come clean about having pocketed CAF II funding rather than spending every penny to make upgrades, and so they are going to claim that the CAF II areas have been upgraded, regardless of the actual situation on the ground. Rural households that didn’t see the promised upgrades will then be counted by the FCC as having better broadband. That will make these areas off limits to future federal funding to fix what the telcos botched. We already see the newest federal grant programs having a new requirement that no more than 10% of the homes covered by federal funding can have broadband today. Because of the falsified mapping, many homes without broadband are going to be deemed to be covered and it will be a massive challenge for somebody else to get funding to help such areas. These communities will be harmed twice – once by the telcos that aren’t upgrading speeds and second by the inaccurate mapping that will stop others from funding assistance to fix the problem.

The big telcos and carriers have huge incentives to lie about rural broadband coverage. None of the big telcos or cellular carriers want to spend any of their own money in rural areas, but they love the revenues they are receiving by a captive rural customer base who pays high prices for poor broadband. The big companies are fighting hard to preserve these revenues, which means they don’t want anybody else to get funding to improve broadband. To make matters worse, the big telcos continue to eliminate technicians and maintenance budgets in rural America, making it nearly impossible for customers to get repairs and service.

I unfortunately don’t have any easy solution for the problem of crappy mapping. Perhaps the FCC could entertain challenges to the broadband maps in the same way they are accepting challenges in the Mobility II process. I know a number of rural communities that would make the effort to create accurate broadband maps if this might bring them better broadband.

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

More FCC Mapping Woes

The FCC has another new billion dollar grant program, this one aimed to improve rural cellular coverage. Labeled as the Mobility Fund II the program will conduct a reverse auction sometime next year to give $4.53 billion to cellular carriers to extend wireless coverage to the most remote parts of the country. For taking the funding a cellular carrier must bring 4G LTE coverage to the funded areas and achieve cellular download speeds of at least 10 Mbps. Funding will be distributed over 10 years with build out requirements sooner than that.

Just like with the CAF II program, the areas eligible for funding are based upon the FCC’s broadband maps using data collected by the existing cellular carriers. As you might expect, the maps show that the parts of the country with the worst coverage – those eligible for funding – are mostly in the mountains and deserts of the west and in Appalachia.

The release of the Mobility Fund II maps instantly set off an uproar as citizens everywhere complained about lack of cellular coverage and politicians from all over the country asked the FCC why there wasn’t more funding coming to their states. The FCC received letters from senators in Mississippi, Missouri, Maine and a number of other states complaining that their states have areas with poor or non-existent cellular coverage that were not covered be the new fund.

If you’ve traveled anywhere in rural America you know that there are big cellular dead spots everywhere. I’ve been to dozens of rural counties all across America in the last few years and every one of them has parts of their counties without good cellular coverage. Everybody living in rural America can point to areas where cellphones don’t work.

The issue boils down to the FCC mapping used to define cellular and broadband coverage. The maps for this program were compiled from a one-time data request to the cellular carriers asking for existing 4G coverage. It’s obvious by the protests that the carriers claim cellular coverage where it doesn’t exist.

In August, the Rural Wireless Association (RWA) filed a complaint with the FCC claiming that Verizon lied about its cellular coverage by claiming coverage in many areas that don’t have it. This is the association of smaller wireless companies (they still exist!). They say that the Verizon’s exaggerated coverage claims will block the funding to many areas that should be eligible.

The Mobility Fund II program allows carriers to challenge the FCC’s maps by conducting tests to identify areas that don’t have good cellular coverage. The smaller carriers in the RWA have been filing these challenges and the FCC just added 90 additional days for the challenge process. Those challenges will surely add new eligible coverage areas for this program.

But the challenge program isn’t going to uncover many of these areas because there are large parts of the country that are not close to an RWA carrier, and which won’t be challenged. People with no cellular coverage that are not part of the this grant program might never get good cellular coverage – something that’s scary as the big telcos plan to tear down copper in rural America.

The extent of the challenges against the Verizon data are good evidence that Verizon overstated 4G LTE coverage. The RWA members I know think Verizon did this purposefully to either block others from expanding cellular networks into areas already served by Verizon or to perhaps direct more of this new fund to areas where Verizon might more easily claim some of the $4.5 billion.

To give Verizon a tiny amount of credit, knowing cellular coverage areas is hard. If you’ve ever seen a coverage map from a single cell tower you’ll instantly notice that it looks like a many-armed starfish. There are parts of the coverage area where good signal extends outward for many miles, but there are other areas where the signal is blocked by a hill or other impediments. You can’t draw circles on a map around a cell tower to show coverage because it only works that way on the Bonneville Salt Flats. There can be dead spots even near to the cell tower.

The FCC fund is laudable in that it’s trying to bring cellular coverage to those areas that clearly don’t have it. But there are countless other holes in cellular coverage that cannot be solved with this kind of fund, and people living in the many smaller cellular holes won’t get any relief from this kind of funding mechanism. Oddly, this fund will bring cellular coverage to areas where almost nobody lives while not addressing cellular holes in more populated areas.

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