Tag Archives: USTelecom

There They Go Again

In a repeat of the silliest blog I write every year, this blog covers the annual pronouncement from USTelecom that broadband prices have dropped again in 2025.

USTelecom has a press release about this same time every year that claims that broadband prices are dropping. The claim this year is that the ‘real price’ for the most popular broadband services dropped 8.7% in 2025 and that the price for gigabit service dropped 6.2%. USTelecom claims that  broadband prices have dropped 43% since 2015, while the price for everything else, using the Overall Consumer Price Index, rose 35.8% in the same time period.

Anybody who pays a broadband bill and who still uses the same ISP as the year before knows they have not seen  a price reduction. If a consumer was paying $80 a year ago, according to USTelecom, their bill should have dropped $6.96 per month.

As usual, USTelecom is playing on words, and the key word in their claim is “real prices”. USTelecom is saying that the cost per megabit of broadband has dropped this year. How can the megabit price drop when the actual prices have increased? It’s simple math – ISPs continue to increase the maximum broadband speeds of their products. For example, in the last year, the download speed on the basic broadband product from Charter was increased from 300 Mbps to 500 Mbps. No consumer thinks about their broadband bill as a cost per megabit, but USTelecom is making its claim based on that.

The statement that broadband prices have dropped 43% since 2015 is a doozy. I would argue that the ‘real’ price paid for broadband is the check we all write each month. Consider how pricing has changed for the biggest ISPs since 2015.

Comcast. In 2015, the basic standalone broadband product from Comcast was Comcast Blast! with 100 Mbps for $76.95. That was not a good measure of Comcast’s pricing, because in 2015 Comcast required a customer who wanted to buy this basic broadband product to also buy a basic cable TV package. We can only guess how much of the $76.95 was for broadband versus cable TV. Comcast basic standalone broadband today is $80 for 300/35 Mbps.

Charter. In 2015, Charter sold 60 Mbps broadband for $40. The company was just getting ready that year to merge with Time Warner Cable, which had a higher price of 50 Mbps for $65. Charter’s basic broadband product today is 500/20 Mbps for $80

AT&T.  The company’s pricing for fiber was interesting in 2015. They sold gigabit speeds for $70, with the price set to match Google Fiber. AT&T hadn’t built much residential fiber then, and this product and price were only available in the handful of markets where AT&T overbuilt Google. Once AT&T started to build extensive fiber, the price came down. However, AT&T has now raised prices by $5 for two years in a row, and their prices are now 300 Mbps for $70, 500 Mbps for $80, and gigabit for $95.

Verizon. In 2015 the basic Verizon broadband was 50/20 Mbps for $40. Their prices now start at 100 Mbps for $59.99, 500 Mbps for $79.99, and gigabit for $99.99.

Prices are clearly rising over time. The big ISPs still have price increases every year. I’ve always assumed that USTelecom publishes this silly report for lobbying purposes, so they can claim to be holding down prices.

It’s certainly possible for customers to pay less today than last year. Lower prices have been one of the big drivers for folks to try FWA cellular home broadband, which is priced significantly below the prices of the big ISPS listed above. FWA base monthly prices are $50 to $65, but bundling with a cellular plan can bring the price for broadband as low as $35.

Are Spectrum Licenses Property?

There is an interesting lawsuit in the U.S Court of Appeals for the case of Ligado Networks, LLC v. United States.  Ligado Networks filed a suit that alleges that the U.S. government unlawfully took its licensed spectrum without due compensation in favor of use by the Department of Defense. The spectrum involved in the suit is L-band spectrum, which sits next to spectrum actively used by DoD for GPS.

The government is arguing in the case that it has the right to take back spectrum when it’s needed for defense purposes. The government is arguing that Ligado doesn’t have a relevant property interest in the spectrum.

For some background, Ligado was granted the spectrum in 2020 by the FCC to use for a satellite-based 5G cellular network. The DoD opposed that license award at the time, and after the FCC awarded the spectrum, the DoD effectively cancelled the Ligado use of the spectrum in opposition to what the FCC had recently ordered. Ligado declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2025, citing the loss of the spectrum that would have been the basis for its business.

Ligado is arguing that what the government is doing is a taking, and that the government could claim any spectrum without compensating the spectrum owner.

USTelecom wrote a brief in the case in support of Ligado Networks. USTelecom argues that its members spend billions of dollars to buy spectrum, and billions more to build networks that use the spectrum. They argue that the government’s actions in this case undermine the ability of carriers to rely on spectrum, which will dampen the willingness to spend a lot of money for spectrum that could be taken away at any time.

The suit should be of interest to WISPs since there is a possibility that the FCC could reclaim CMRS spectrum to meet the Congressional mandate to to find more spectrum for  cellular auctions. The WISP industry has been working hard to protect that spectrum, but this case has to make them nervous.

USTelecom further argues that the government could use the same logic to argue that it could take back rights-of-way or other uses of public lands. In case that sounds far-fetched, the Supreme Court of Georgia recently ruled that local governments can withdraw contracts that granted rights-of-way, by relying on an argument that no contract can last forever, with no end date. The Georgia rights-of-way will likely be renegotiated. But the principle is bad news for telcos, cable companies, electric companies, wireless companies, and the many businesses that rely on maintaining rights-of-way to support long-term infrastructure. The same logic can hold for public lands.

A judge ruled in November that the Ligado suit can continue to examine the issue of whether spectrum licenses are property. This is a suit worth keeping an eye on.

USTelecom’s 2025 Wish List

Jonathan Spalter, the President and CEO of USTelecom wrote an open letter to the White House and Congress with its wish list for government action in  2025. USTelecom is the trade association and lobbying arm representing the biggest telcos and cable companies. The most interesting thing about the list is that most smaller ISPs will agree with almost everything on it.

Champion Networks of the Future. This asks the federal government to make it easier to tear down copper telco networks. It’s an interesting request because, for the most part, the big telcos are already doing this. They are really asking the federal government to intercede in states that want to see customers provided with an alternative option for basic communications before they lose a copper telephone line.

Secure and Reform Universal Service. USTelecom recognizes that the existence of the Universal Service Fund is in jeopardy due to open court cases that could kill or maim it. This is a request for Congress to pass legislation that reinforces the mission of the USF and that also fixes the broken funding mechanism that gets funding today from telephone services.

Put the Pedal to the Metal on Broadband Deployment. This is support for moving quickly with BEAD grants while relaxing some of the BEAD rules such as requiring low rates. The big ISPs assume a lot of this funding will go to them. Some of the reforms that USTelecom wants can be done by NTIA, but others will need action by Congress.

Review All Legacy Regulations. USTelecom asks to eliminate outdated regulations and reporting, a reasonable request. Unfortunately, some of the silliest outdated requirements come from Congress and legislation is needed to kill some old requirements.

Break the Federal Permitting Log Jam. This has been on the list for twenty years. Getting permits on federal land can be nearly impossible. There has been announcements from the last several White Houses that supposedly addressed the issue but that haven’t resulted in any meaningful change.

Model Efficient, Effective Cybersecurity. This is the hardest wish to accomplish and undoubtedly comes from the recent Chinese hacking of our telecom networks. I have to wonder if this is too big of a challenge to fix with centralized government edicts – and if telcos really want the government telling them how to handle cybersecurity. But it definitely must be addressed.

What’s interesting is what is not on this list. There is no request to eliminate heavy FCC regulation, because the big telcos already know they now have a friendly FCC.

Big ISPs Claim Great Customer Service

In late October, the FCC launched a “Notice of Inquiry that seeks information on current customer service practices to build a public record on the current state of customer support and ways that the FCC can “protect families and businesses that rely on these critical services.” The FCC sought comments from the public about broadband, cable, and telephone providers.

The associations for the big ISPs responded to the docket and basically said that their member companies offer great customer service. NCTA – The Internet and Television Association, which represents the big cable companies, filed comments that said that cable companies provide great service in today’s competitive market as a way to attract and retain customers. USTelecom, the lobbyist for the largest telcos, said that competition gives them no choice but to provide high-quality customer service.

I’ve written a few blogs over the years about the American Customer Service Index (ACSI), which measures customer satisfaction across all major industries each year. The ACSI historically ranked the ISP and cable industry at the bottom compared to other major industries. That put ISPs and cable companies below insurance companies, banks, and airlines in terms of customer satisfaction.

The current ACSI shows a lot of improvement over time for some parts of the industry. I looked back at the ACSI index from 2019 to make the following comparisons: The overall rating for ISPs since then increased from 62 to 71. This is due almost entirely to higher customer ratings today for fiber ISPs, at 76. Overall, cable companies improved from 62 to 68, although some cable companies still have low rankings, like Mediacom (61) and Optimum/Altice (63). The two biggest cable companies current rankings are Comcast (67) and Charter (68). Almost all other industries have rankings in the high 70s into the 80s.

One of the issues highlighted by the FCC inquiry suggests that ISPs should “offer live customer service support by phone within a reasonable time frame.” USTelecom responded by saying that telco online chatbots are quickly getting better at addressing customer needs.

The few smaller ISPs and municipal ISPs that made it into the ACSI survey show a high level of customer satisfaction – the public ire is aimed at the biggest companies only.

There were numerous filings in the FCC docket from groups representing the public. The filings documented customers who had long service outages and other significant problems. Comments were filed about the problems encountered by customers trying to resolve problems with online customer service. The California Public Utility Commission said in a filing that it believes that big ISPs don’t focus on customer service because they don’t have to – the CPUC said only 26% of California residents have a choice between two fast ISPs.

There was no telling where the FCC under Chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel was headed with this docket, but there likely would have eventually been some guidelines or regulations defining good customer service. It seems almost certain that the issue will be dropped by the new FCC, since Republican-led FCCs have generally favored ISPs over the public.

USTelecom Claims Dropping Prices Again

This is a blog that I get to write every year – and each year, the claims get a little crazier. USTelecom recently issued its fourth annual Broadband Pricing Index and claims that broadband prices from the big ISPs are dropping. You’ll be glad to know that, according to the report, broadband prices dropped over 18% just in the last year for the most popular broadband tiers. Prices for the fastest tier of broadband dropped 6.5% last year. I’d love to hear from anybody who had their ISP cut their rate by 18% this year – that would have been a $12.60 price reduction for a $70 broadband bill.

This annual publication is so hilariously misleading that it’s hard for anybody in the industry to look at this as anything but a colossal joke. However, this report serves a purpose for the big ISPs. They can plant a seed with regulators and legislators that broadband prices are not only not increasing – but are getting cheaper. This also provides fodder for some of the unsavory folks in the broadband industry to publish articles repeating the point. This is also the kind of misinformation that will bounce around social media and confuse folks – because it’s hard to think of any examples where an ISP has ever reduced the price of basic broadband, like implied by this report.

The folks who wrote this report must have had a lot of fun finding ways to hide the facts because they came up with clever ways to produce statistics that don’t mean anything useful. A big part of the report compares the cost over time to buy a megabit of speed. Nobody would deny that speeds have increased tremendously over time, at a rate much faster than prices have increased. I was looking through some old Comcast pricing sheets. In 2009, Comcast had four broadband products that year that ranged from 12/2 Mbps for $42.95 to 50/10 Mbps for $149.95. The product that is most similar to Comcast’s current basic broadband delivered 16/2 Mbps for $52.95.  Since that time, Comcast has increased the speed of basic broadband four times – to 30 Mbps, then 60 Mbps, then 100 Mbps, and now 300 Mbps. Over fourteen years, download speeds are 19 times faster than in 2009. It’s a fact that broadband has gotten faster, but that is not the same thing as cheaper.

The report also plays a sleight of hand by comparing premium products from the past to non-premium products from today. Again, with Comcast, the basic 16/2 Mbps broadband in 2009 cost $52.95 and also required a $10 modem. Today, the basic price for 300 Mbps broadband is $93 with a $15 modem. That’s an increase since 2009 of $45, a 72% increase. The authors of the report would have instead pointed to the 50/10 Mbps product as the most comparable product – but in 2009, that was a premium product priced at $149.95 plus a $10 modem. The report would say that the price of broadband has dropped.

The report makes a lot of claims by mentioning costs of broadband over time, but it never identifies the ISP or the specific products. If prices had really dropped, USTelecom would be publishing tables of the prices charged by the big ISPs for each year.

I leave it to readers to read the report, and I won’t repeat the silly math that shows the big savings. This is the fourth year of the report, and the claims have gotten wilder each year. At the rate of accumulated savings claimed by the report, in another five years, broadband is going to be free. When that happens, I will admit I am wrong and will correct this blog as being too cynical.

Trade Associations

Anybody new to the broadband industry quickly finds out that the industry is full of trade associations. There are associations of service providers and other associations representing various segments of the industry, such as electronics manufacturers and construction contractors.

Trade associations play several roles for their members. Most trade associations lobby on behalf of their members, and some associations are primarily lobbyists. Trade associations routinely file position papers with federal and state regulatory agencies on behalf of members. Other trade associations concentrate on providing services to members. Perhaps one of the most useful functions of trade associations is holding conventions and meetings so that like-minded members can talk to their peers. Most of the trade associations that you’ll find quoted in the press are national associations, but there are also numerous regional and state-level trade associations.

Many trade associations are focused on a specific industry segment. CTIA largely represents cellular companies. NTCA is largely comprised of rural ISPs. But a few trade associations are interesting because they include members that seemingly compete against each other. For example, ACA Connects has a wide-ranging membership that includes cable, telco, and fiber companies under the same umbrella. One thing is for sure – an industry newcomer needs a lineup card to keep them all straight.

Viewed from inside the industry, it’s easy to think of trade associations as powerful entities since they can speak for an entire industry segment. But it’s interesting to look at the big picture. There are over 26,000 nationwide trade associations in the country – and every industry imaginable has them.

It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of industry trade associations during my career. When I first started in the 1970s, there were not many associations. But as the industry evolved, new trade associations came to life. The newest association, APPB, was formed in 2022 to represent the interests of municipal broadband providers. Existing trade associations sometimes splinter if the association starts taking positions that not all members endorse. One of the most common disagreements within trade associations is between large members and small members – it’s common for a trade association to adopt positions that favor its largest members.

One of the best examples of this is USTelecom – The Broadband Association. This is the oldest industry trade association that was first created as the Independent Telephone Association in 1897 by a group of non-Bell telephone companies. The first members were looking for a unified voice to lobby against the power of the Bell telephone companies that were running roughshod over regulators at the time.

Over time, the association rebranded as USTA (United States Telecom Association). After the divestiture of AT&T into regional Bell companies, USTA underwent a big change when it allowed former Bell companies to join. Over a few years, a lot of smaller members of the association went elsewhere as the association started to be dominated by the large companies. When I see a USTelecom position now, I always assume it is primarily speaking for AT&T, Verizon, Lumen, and the other large telcos.

USTelecom is also a good example of how trade associations change to reflect the evolution of the industry. The association rebranded to add on the “the Broadband Association” to recognize that telephone companies have morphed primarily into broadband companies. We see the same thing happening all over the industry. When I recently looked at the website for NCTA, the association representing the largest cable companies, one of the predominant articles talks about needing more balanced policies on spectrum – because cable companies are increasingly also becoming cellular companies. Evolution in the industry is inevitable and we’re seeing unprecedented convergence between the companies in the industry and the technologies and businesses they pursue. I have to wonder how convergence will affect trade associations. For example, what will eventually happen to an association like NCTA if cable companies all migrate to fiber – similar questions loom all around the industry.

An Odd Appeal to Rural America

USTelecom recently sent a letter to practically every politician who might have a hand in deciding how broadband grants are awarded – the White House and key Cabinet officials, the NTIA, the FCC, members of Congress, Governors, Mayors, other local officials, tribal leaders, and state broadband offices. That’s some mailing list!

The main thrust of the letter is that communities should only rely on experienced broadband partners to build and operate networks – obviously meaning the big ISPs. The letter reminds officials that building a network is only a part of the solution and that communities need partners that know how to operate the business over the long run. The letter specifically calls out municipalities and non-profits as not being good partners because of their “propensity to fail at building and maintaining complex networks over time.”

The letter asks Congress to modify the current grant rules to remove any preferences for municipalities, non-profits, and electric cooperatives. USTelecom wants the grant rules to be changed to favor ISPs with experience and financial wherewithal. The big ISPs also think that communities should only be able to spend grant money by giving it to an ISP partner.

USTelecom also uses the letter to ask for changes that will make it easier to build broadband networks. They ask the various governments to:

  • Eliminate permitting delays and fees.
  • Streamline rights-of-way acquisition.
  • Streamline easements for railroad and other complex situations.
  • Eliminate Title II regulation (which, by the way, was eliminated by the last FCC – they actually fear it coming back).
  • Change the contributions to the Universal Service Fund so that all players pay a fair share.
  • Use only the FCC’s new maps to determine grant eligibility.

This letter is perhaps the most succinct statement of the broadband wish list of the big ISPs that I’ve seen in many years. They have been lobbying for everything on this list, but I can’t recall them asking for everything at the same time.

From a strategic position, this letter is mostly aimed at local officials. It’s unlikely that Congress or the White House is going to change the trajectory of the current grants at this late date. To do so would start the grant clock all over and push grant funding a few more years into the future.

It’s an interesting appeal to make to local governments since city and county officials will have a big hand in determining who gets grant funding when they choose a grant partner. This wish list basically tells local officials that they should have no option other than to fork grant money over to the biggest ISPs. And while asking local officials to change local rules to make it easier to build broadband, the big ISPs don’t want local governments to be able to challenge the FCC maps that the ISPs create. My guess is that most local officials are going to be offended by this document, so I don’t think this is going to get the reaction that USTelecom is hoping for.

The other odd aspect of this appeal is that most current grant money is going to rural America. The letter asks to keep electric cooperatives out of the broadband business – but many rural people still remember how the electric cooperatives bailed them out when nobody else would bring electricity. It’s interesting to stress experience when electric cooperatives have been around a lot longer than ISPs like the cable companies.

The big telephone companies have been around the longest – but they have a very poor name in rural America. A century ago, the large Bell companies refused to build in rural America, just like the big electric companies. Thousands of small local telcos were formed to fill the void but most eventually got gobbled up by companies that morphed into CenturyLink, Frontier, and Windstream. The big telcos have largely abandoned rural America over the last few decades – and it is that neglect that is the primary reason why rural broadband is in such bad shape. I’m sure there are some communities that will partner with the big ISPs – but a lot of communities that I work with would hope to partner with almost anybody else. This letter is not going to change many minds.

Is Your Broadband Getting Cheaper?

Since the national dialog has suddenly fixated on inflation, the big ISPs decided to jump into the discussion by claiming that broadband prices are falling. You need to watch this short video from USTelecom to see the ridiculousness of their claim.

The big ISP industry has been trotting out this untruth for the last several years. This is the latest permutation of the claim that broadband prices are falling. What underlies this claim is that the cost per megabit of speed has been falling as ISPs increase speeds. By definition, when an ISP upgrades a customer from 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps, the cost per megabit drops. While the cable companies have been unilaterally increasing speeds, consumers have not seen the check they write each month drop. There is no consumer who wouldn’t think that “broadband prices are falling” to mean that monthly bills are dropping.

Just the opposite is true for most ISPs. The cable companies have been raising rates steadily for the past five years. Charter has raised broadband prices by $5 per month in each of the past three years. Those rate increases were far higher than the rate of inflation in each of the three years. Comcast seems to have slowed a bit on rate increases, but this is after many years of rate increases that have pushed the cost of basic broadband to around $90.

This assertion doesn’t even consider the quiet rate increases. Consider ISPs like Comcast that bill for overages on data caps. As recently as the beginning of 2018, OpenVault said that about 4% of all households used more than 1 terabyte of data per month. In the most recent report for the end of 2021, OpenVault says that 15.1% of households routinely use a terabyte of data per month and 2.5% now use more than two terabytes. That means a lot more customers than in the past are getting dinged for exceeding data caps.

However, this USTelecom claim is not aimed at consumers who would laugh at the idea that their bill for broadband has gone down. Recall that USTelecom is the lobbying arm of the big ISPs, and this claim is aimed at politicians and policymakers. Rolling out the cost-reduction canard coincided with a change of Chairman at the FCC. The big ISP quake at the idea of regulators ever considering any form of rate regulation. This misinformation campaign is mostly a strategy to plant the idea that broadband rates don’t need to be examined.

What might be the most ironic about this campaign is that prices really might start dropping. The big cable companies have been able to maintain high stock prices for a decade due to the incredible annual growth fueled by luring customers away from telephone company DSL. But we’re seeing broadband customer growth slow and stagnate for cable companies that are smaller than Comcast and Charter. Charter has adopted a strategy of passing millions of new homes with fiber as a way to try to keep growth going. Comcast just announced last week that it intends to edge out to at least 800,000 new passing this year – something it could have done any time over the last decade.

We are starting to see the beginning of real competition for urban broadband. T-Mobile says it expects to gain millions of customers this year for its FWA wireless broadband that uses cellular frequencies. Verizon is also starting to aggressively market its FWA product. Later this year, Dish will be hitting the market hard. AT&T says it will finally roll out its FWA product next year. While the low prices of FWA are aimed at luring remaining DSL customers, the speeds are good enough to be attractive to cable customers. Verizon is peddling FWA for as low as $25 per month for Verizon cellular customers. The regular price for all of the carriers selling the product is in the $50 to $60 range – far less than the cost of standalone cable company broadband.

If the big telcos stick to their business plans, millions of urban and suburban homes will be overbuilt with fiber in the next few years. So far, fiber prices have been lower than cable company broadband prices.

I’m really curious to see if the big ISPs stick with this story of falling broadband prices if their rates actually start dropping. That doesn’t seem like a story they will want to emphasize for Wall Street analysts.

U.S. Broadband Prices – High or Low?

Over the years, I’ve seen a number of studies that ask how U.S. broadband prices stack up against the rest of the world. Interestingly, in 2021 I saw reports at both ends of the spectrum. One report says that U.S. broadband prices are among the most expensive in the world. At the other extreme is a report that claims that U.S. broadband prices are low and that prices are falling.

Let’s start with the high price claim. The most recent look comes from CompareTheMarket that claims that the average U.S. residential price for broadband is $66.13 and is the ninth most expensive in the world. The study compares a broadband product in each country that offers unlimited bandwidth and that delivers speeds of at least 60 Mbps download. According to this report, the only places with higher prices than the U.S. are Ethiopia, UAE, Qatar, Zimbabwe, Oman, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, and Iceland.

The calculated $66.13 price seems realistic to me and is similar to numbers I’ve been gathering all year through surveys. The CompareTheMarket price is only for broadband and doesn’t include a WiFi modem. I’ve been seeing average prices that include the WiFi modem generally range between $70 and $75 per month. It’s worth noting that the big ISPs have been quietly burying the cost of broadband in the modem fee, with one of the highest fees being the $14 monthly fee from Comcast.

There is another report that claims that U.S. Broadband prices are not only affordable but are falling from year to year. This comes from the 2021 Broadband Pricing Index Report published by USTelecom, the lobbying arm of the biggest ISPs in the country. That report makes some outrageous claims. For example, it claims that the price of the most popular tier of broadband declined by 7.5% between 2020 and 2021 – something that’s impossible to believe when Comcast and Charter, which together are half of the broadband industry, each had a significant rate increase during that period.

It’s impossible to understand what USTelecom is comparing since there are zero statistics cited to back up its numbers. It seems to be relying on the fact that the price per megabit has been decreasing – which I don’t think anybody disputes.  It’s clear that consumer broadband speeds have risen at a faster pace than prices. But that’s not what the report is implying – a casual reader would have to assume the report means that out-of-pocket prices to customers are dropping.

USTelecom puts out this report every year, and I always find it rankling. There is no consumer in the U.S. who thinks their ISP is cutting broadband prices. Some ISPs still negotiate with customers that ask for lower rates, but overall, broadband prices from the big cable companies that control most of the market keep rising year after year.

Comcast just announced an overall 3% price increase across the board for January 2022, but I haven’t yet seen this expressed in specific product prices. This comes on top of the basic broadband at Comcast that I calculate to cost $90. That’s $76 for the basic standalone broadband package (100 Mbps or 200 Mbps in most markets), plus $14 for the WiFi modem. The rate increase would put the new price at around $93.

I have to think that the USTelecom report is aimed at providing cover for politicians that support the big ISPs. There are no consumers who feel like broadband prices are dropping – unless perhaps they are in a market where a new competitor showed up during the last year. But USTelecom and the big ISPs want politicians to think the ISPs are looking out for the public during the pandemic.

I know I shouldn’t get worked up over these kinds of shenanigans from the big ISPs. But it’s aggravating to see them peddle such blather since the purpose behind these untruths is to lobby policymakers. This is a story the ISPs want legislators to hear to tell at a time when the big ISPs know that the FCC is likely to reintroduce broadband regulation. The message from the big ISPs is clear, “Why regulate us? Look how well we’re taking care of the public without regulation”. Tell that to the families paying $90 per month for Comcast broadband – assuming they don’t exceed Comcast’s data cap and pay even more.

Testing the FCC Maps

USTelecom has been advocating the use of geocoding to make broadband maps more accurate. As part of that advocacy, the association tested their idea by looking at the FCC mapping in parts of Virginia and Missouri.

What they found was not surprising, but still shocking. They found in those two states that as many as 38% of households in rural census blocks were classified as being served, when in fact they were unserved. In FCC-speak, served is a home that has broadband available of 25/3 Mbps or faster. Unserved means homes having either no broadband available or that can buy broadband slower than 10/1 Mbps.

This distinction has huge significance for the industry. First, it’s been clear that the FCC has been overcounting the number of homes that have broadband. But far worse, the FCC has been awarding grants to provide faster broadband in unserved areas and all of the places that have been misclassified have not been eligible for grants. We’re about to enter the biggest grant program ever that will award $20.4 billion, but only to places that don’t have 25/3 Mbps speeds – meaning these misclassified homes will be left out again if the maps aren’t fixed soon.

The USTelecom effort is not even complete since several cable companies in the state did not participate in the trial – and this might mean that the percentage of homes that are misclassified is even larger. The misclassified homes are likely going to be those in census blocks that also contain at least some homes with fast broadband. Homes just past where the cable company networks start might be listed as being capable of buying a gigabit, and yet have no broadband option.

The existing FCC maps use data that is reported by ISPs using the Form 477 process. In that process, ISPs report speed availability by census block. There are two huge flaws with this reporting method. First, if even one customer in the census block can get fast broadband, then the whole census block is assumed to have fast broadband. Second, many ISPs have been reporting marketing speeds instead of actual speeds, and so there are whole census blocks counted as served when nobody can get real broadband.

The trial also uncovered other problems. The ISPs have not been accurate in counting homes by census block. Many ISPs have never accurately mapped their customers, and so the test found numerous examples of customers reported in the wrong census blocks. Additionally, the counts of buildings by census block are often far off, due in part to the confusing nature of rural addresses.

The bottom line is that the FCC has been collecting and reporting highly inaccurate data concerning rural broadband. We’ve known this for a long time because there have been numerous efforts to test the maps in smaller geographic areas that have highlighted these same mistakes. We also have evidence from Microsoft that shows that a huge number of homes are not connected to the Internet at speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps. That’s not just a rural issue, and for the Microsoft numbers to be true there must be a massive number of urban homes that are getting speeds slower than what is being reported to the FCC.

As dramatic as this finding is from USTelecom, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Unfortunately, no mapping strategy is going to be able to truthfully report the broadband speeds for DSL and fixed wireless. The speed of these products varies by home. Further, there is no way to know if a given home can utilize these technologies until somebody tries to connect them. Perhaps this isn’t important for DSL since there is almost no rural DSL capable of delivering 25/3 Mbps broadband. But any mapping of the coverage area of fixed wireless is going to be suspect since many homes are impeded from seeing a tranmitting antenna or else receive slower speeds than their neighbors due to impediments. The USTelecom effort is mostly fixing the boundary issues where homes are assumed to have broadband today but don’t. The 38% misreporting would be much higher if we could somehow magically know the real capabilities of DSL and fixed wireless.

The current FCC didn’t create this problem – it goes back several FCCs ago to the start of the 477 reporting system. However, I have to wonder if this FCC will change its mind about the status of rural broadband in the country even with better maps. The current FCC released broadband data for 2016 that included a huge error. A new ISP, Barrier Free had reported serving 25/3 broadband in census blocks covering 62 million people, when in June of that year the company didn’t yet have any customers. The FCC gleefully reported that the number of homes without broadband had dropped by 25%, mostly due to this reporting error. Even after correcting the error the FCC still declared that broadband in rural America was on the right trajectory and didn’t need any extraordinary effort from the FCC. I’m sure they will decide that rural broadband is fine, even if the number of unserved homes jumps significantly due to better mapping.