Reporting Tools for Broadband Maps Need Not Favor Cable or Telecom, Sectors Say

At stake is government funding to expand broadband deployments to unserved areas. Maps drawn too broadly could show service available across an entire neighborhood or larger geographical block even if broadband is available to a single home. Overstating availability can cut access to USF funds to providers interested in serving a rural territory that would otherwise be entitled to competing for the dollars. Shapefile data uses geocodes displayed in polygon shapes to showcase a provider's serviceable area. A location fabric displays every structure in an area at the address level, regardless of whether it's served by an ISP.

USTelecom is funding a pilot to test use of a location fabric in real-world settings in two states, but it hasn't been decided who would pay for a nationwide map using the tool. Vice President-Policy and Advocacy Lynn Follansbee estimated it would cost $10 million to $12 million to develop the data for the nationwide location fabric and another $2.5 million annually to update it. She suggested because the broadband maps will be used to inform USF programs, the money could come from there, or through congressional appropriations. NCTA also wants congressional funding to support data collecting for broadband maps (see 1906110042).

The NCTA and USTelecom proposals "aren't really addressing the same issues," said Steve Morris, NCTA vice president-general counsel. "To us, they're not mutually exclusive." He said if the FCC adopts both approaches, "presumably the fabric could be designed to put shapefiles on top of it." Connected Nation CEO Tom Ferree said the two proposals can complement one another.

ITTA participates in a coalition to promote a serviceable location fabric, said President Genny Morelli. "The shapefiles approach will not show locations where they are not being served." The location fabric is more comprehensive, she said. "It would have full and complete and up-to-date information."

NTCA supports having the FCC ask providers to submit shapefile data, said Mike Romano, senior vice president, "but we don't think you should stop there." Adding a location fabric to anchor the map is warranted, he said, but wouldn't remove all potential uncertainties from broadband maps. "There is no cure-all," Romano said. Unless government does independent testing for speed and service availability at every location, "there is an opportunity for error and overstatement," he said.

Provider data is expected to be more granular under the new models, but proposals also urge crowdsourcing to allow the public to challenge inaccurate data on speed or availability. The challenge is to "find people who are interested but not too interested," said Tellus Ventures Associates President Steve Blum. If the crowdsourcing "sample frame consists only of broadband activists," he said, it won't provide an accurate picture of the broadband landscape. "You shouldn't use public data as verbatim," Romano said.

NCTA's Morris said public information can be used to help the FCC fine-tune the data on its broadband maps, but "it must be done with care. Not all information will be good information." Having the FCC verify the data from providers or public challenges could be expensive and beyond the agency's staffing resources, he said.

Industry wants to make sure changes to FCC Form 477 data reporting structure won't be unduly burdensome, said CEO Claude Aiken of the Wireless ISP Association, which is also involved with the USTelecom broadband mapping pilot. "We want to make sure the burden is appropriately calibrated," including for WISPA's small members, he said. Serviceable areas for fixed wireless can be hard to get right, he said, and he would like new FCC technical standards to make it easier. Connected Nation's Ferree hopes Form 477 revision lowers the burden on reporting for providers and reduces potential redundancy with new broadband mapping data requirements.

"In my experience, the providers will need assistance," said Bailey White, co-founder of telecom software vendor CrowdFiber, which works with ISPs. "Certainly, people will need more tools." White supports both the shapefile and location fabric proposals. But he said it can be hard to draw a clear shape where providers don't have contiguous service areas or where service speeds vary, such as a new housing development wired with new fiber next to an older neighborhood.

Mapping of cities and rural areas differs and may be hard to compare, said Doug Dawson, CCG Consulting president. Urban cable companies tend to know their broadband service speeds and can report them accurately, but providers using anything other than fiber might find inconsistent speeds household to household. "They don't know the speed of the customers they don't serve," Dawson said. "They couldn't go out with a truck and measure. If it's not fiber, you can't measure it." Relying on consumers to report their speeds could be inaccurate, too, if they have older Wi-Fi routers. Dawson doesn't fully support either of the new approaches for reporting broadband mapping data because "it's a fools errand. We're trying to make something measurable that can't be measured."