House Lawmaker Alarmed Over Broadband Mapping Accuracy Concerns

"The broadband map was done in a way that would make you think that areas that are underserved are properly served,” Subcommittee Chairman Chris Collins, R-N.Y., told us after the hearing. The Orleans County mapping projects that around 95 percent of the area is covered, but upon scrutiny from local stakeholders, “the map was just the reverse,” Collins said, with the bulk of the county not able to access adequate broadband. That concern emerged as the “high point” of the day, Collins said. He heard complaints at both the field hearing and a roundtable afterward, he said, criticizing a “little nuance, deliberate or not” in broadband mapping in which mappers overestimated coverage based on how they assessed area ZIP codes. He criticized the mapping methodology as not “statistically valid,” leading to at least in some cases quite “distorted” mapping. “We're going to follow up with the FCC on the broadband coverage,” Collins said. “The reality is they don’t have coverage.”

Government, industry and public interest stakeholders have said broadband mapping accuracy has been improving, though some think it can be even better (CD Jan 10 p4). A staffer for the House Small Business Committee who was at the hearing told us a lot of stakeholders depend on funding pegged to such broadband mapping. Committee staff will be putting together a letter to send to the FCC and the Rural Utilities Service summarizing the hearing’s key concerns and emphasizing the broadband mapping fears, the staffer said.

Time Warner Cable, New York state’s leading broadband provider, warned of the need for careful spending of government dollars. “Such programs and partnerships must be focused on unserved areas so taxpayer dollars are not wasted duplicating existing, privately funded networks,” testified Mark Meyerhofer, Time Warner Cable director-government relations for northeast and western New York (http://1.usa.gov/NxGTLh).

"When taxpayer funds are used to overbuild an existing provider, the result is unfair competition for a limited number of customers,” Meyerhofer said, warning against the government choosing winners and losers. He also said government programs should focus on last-mile services and be technology- and provider-neutral. “The costs of these programs should be broadly shared rather than paid for by a tax or fee on a specific set of consumers or taxpayers,” he said. “If rural broadband deployment is the public policy goal, the cost should be born as broadly as possible and the deployment cost to the individual consumer should be as low as possible.” Government funding and incentives “should come with no strings attached,” Meyerhofer said. He hailed the state’s ConnectNY program.

Collins told us Comcast’s plan to buy Time Warner Cable didn’t come up during the hearing. He called both cable companies providers which offer “good service and competition” and expressed openness to the deal: “Right now I'm not troubled by that.”

Frontier ‘Relentlessly’ Upgrading Broadband

Frontier Communications is “relentlessly deploying and upgrading broadband to the communities we serve,” testified General Manager Bob Smith, overseeing the telco’s western New York operations (http://1.usa.gov/OF6LWg). His written testimony noted Frontier’s different collaborations with lawmakers and communities throughout the state. “Since 2010, we have invested more than $2.2 billion in company funds to increase broadband access and improve infrastructure, and an additional $133.2 million from the FCC’s Connect America Fund supports broadband deployment exclusively to unserved high-cost areas,” he said.

Congress must get involved, NTCA Assistant General Counsel Jill Canfield testified. Lawmakers should issue an “express directive to the FCC to ensure that all who use our nation’s networks -- by whatever service or technology -- are responsible to contribute to the universal well-being and availability of those networks on an equitable basis,” she said (http://1.usa.gov/1d4BiZ0). “The pool of assessable telecommunications service revenues is shrinking even as overall communications-related revenues grow. As a result, the USF program effectively has an artificial funding ceiling that lowers a bit each day due to the failure to broaden the contribution base and to stem the incentives (and abilities) that are in place today which encourage or allow entities to avoid contributing.” Canfield slammed what she called a nonsense legacy regulation that compelled rural customers to buy regulated voice service. She lamented the rural call completion problem and praised legislation introduced recently by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D. (CD March 14 p7), which she said would likely tackle “the crux” of the problem.

"The recent Comcast/Netflix deal made clear that, while peering is the name of the game in the IP world, small businesses could be forced by larger providers to haul data traffic long distances and pay significant sums to interconnect in the absence of a backstop to ensure fair dealing in interconnection agreements,” Canfield said, pointing to a demand for data expected to wildly grow. Networks must be able to “seamlessly interconnect,” with clear rules in place, she said.

Rural farmers depend on broadband connections and face challenges of affordability and bandwidth, said Kendra Lamb, owner of Lamb Farms, testifying for the New York Farm Bureau(http://1.usa.gov/1ijNrZl). Collins told us his big concern is the farmers and educators who said they lack adequate broadband. “That’s holding us back,” he said. He called the hearing “timely” and said he believes there’s “clearly a role for the government to play” in expanding broadband access in rural areas, despite his overall preference for less government. “That last mile’s expensive -- we all know it.” (jhendel@warren-news.com)