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Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (Authority) Executive Director Brandon Carson reminded Pennsylvanians of the important role they have in ensuring their information is correct in the new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) broadband access map. “I urge every Pennsylvanian to …
LOS ANGELES — States are racing against a deadline to challenge the map federal officials will use to divvy up the nation’s largest-ever investment in high-speed internet.
At stake is a share of the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, part of the infrastructure measure President Joe Biden signed into law last year.
A draft of the Federal Communications Commission’s new broadband map, a future version of which will determine how much of a $42.5 billion federal investment in high-speed internet each state gets. The darker the blue, the better the broadband coverage.
States have until Jan. 13 to challenge a broadband speed map the Federal Communications Commission released in November that, for the first time, illustrates the haves and have nots of internet access down to specific street addresses.
Critics long suspected the number of people with internet connections was overstated by the government, in part because agencies creating the maps deferred to telecommunications companies to say where service is provided.
Extending service to remote areas with few customers can be expensive for internet providers, but using the surge of new federal funds to fill the gaps depends heavily on knowing where they are.
West Virginia officials already submitted challenges for 138,000 underserved homes, businesses and other locations in the state that they say are missing, and they’re preparing at least 40,000 more.
“We’re going to find out,” said U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat. “There is no excuse that West Virginia — every nook and cranny, every person — if they’ve got electricity in their house, by God they can get internet in their house, too.”
According to the first draft of this year’s FCC map, 2% of residential addresses in the U.S. have no broadband access at all and 11% are considered underserved. But those figures are likely to rise after the state challenges.
Previous FCC maps depicted broadband availability at the census block level. That meant that if an internet service provider reported that it offered broadband to one home within a census block, the whole census block would be considered served.
But Congress in 2020 tasked the FCC with creating a more precise broadband map. It hired a company called CostQuest, which tapped tax assessment and land use records, as well as census and geospatial data, to create the underlying layer of the map showing every address where broadband can be installed. Then, internet service providers reported what internet speeds they actually offer at each address.
To counter expected discrepancies, the public can challenge the map — an option that wasn’t available with the FCC’s census block-level maps.
“I like to refer to (the new FCC map) as census block-penetrating radar,” said Jim Stritzinger, the director of South Carolina’s broadband office, which reported 33,000 state addresses missing from the map.
Mississippi’s state broadband director, Sally Doty, said her office found a “tremendous amount” of addresses missing in high-growth areas of the state, including DeSoto and Madison counties and along the Gulf Coast. The state launched a website at the end of November where residents can run speed tests and fill out a survey about their internet service.
“If we have low speeds for an area that is reported as covered, it will allow us to investigate that further and determine the appropriate action,” Doty said, adding that she hopes to get 100,000 unique responses through the website before the end of the year.
Maine’s state broadband office sent engineers to some 2,500 addresses across populated areas where it predicted broadband technology was likely to be misreported. Over the course of two weeks, the engineers identified approximately 1,000 discrepancies between the information on the FCC map and what actually exists in the state, Meghan Grabill, a data analyst working on the project, said. The state is combining its results from the field analysis with data from internet providers, the postal service and emergency dispatchers to identify other discrepancies.
While some states are pouring millions of dollars into the challenge process, others say they lack the resources to fully participate.
Kansas’ state broadband office recently hired two new staff members, boosting the total number to just four. Rather than collect data in bulk, the state has focused its efforts on webinars and public outreach to train residents how to challenge the map themselves.
Jade Piros de Carvalho, director of the Office of Broadband Development in the Kansas Department of Commerce, talks about the need for broadband internet service across the state with a map of state grants for projects on Dec. 13 in the department’s offices in Topeka, Kansas.
“We’re walking them step by step through it,” said Jade Piros de Carvalho, Kansas’ broadband director.
The Jan. 13 deadline was set so that the FCC can resolve challenges before the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announces states’ allotments in June 2023.
Officials in some states, including Texas and Vermont, have pressed for the deadline to be extended, but the FCC has given no indication it will move back the Jan. 13 date.
While acknowledging that the new FCC map is a marked improvement over past versions, Piros de Carvalho questioned whether the timeline of the challenge process will leave certain states behind.
“What makes it really unfortunate is we’re trying to shore up disparities in service, but are we inadvertently exacerbating these inequities by disadvantaging the most rural or economically distressed states that have lower capacities in their offices?” Piros de Carvalho said. “I think it might be an unintentional consequence of these timelines and requirements.”
Photo Credit: Jelena Zelen / Shutterstock
The COVID-19 pandemic brought into focus an indisputable fact about the U.S. today: access to quality internet service is key to full participation in society and the economy. As workplaces and schools moved online and households increasingly relied on internet-enabled services like ecommerce and streaming platforms, those with good internet service were better able to manage the transition than those without.
But inequitable access to high-speed internet has been an issue for much longer than the last two years. Policymakers and business leaders—especially those from low-income and rural communities—have long advocated for increased investment in broadband infrastructure to unlock greater economic opportunities in underprivileged areas. These efforts, along with the access issues raised during the pandemic, have inspired major action over the last two years. Federal COVID relief legislation like the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan included funds to support broadband expansion, and a $65 billion investment in broadband was one of the major components of the bipartisan infrastructure package signed into law last November.
The importance of connecting more Americans has grown as the internet has become a more ubiquitous part of society and the economy over time. Beginning in the 1990s, the internet moved from primarily government and academic uses to application for communications, business, and other wide-ranging uses. By 2000, just over half of U.S. adults reported using the internet in some capacity, and innovations like ecommerce and smartphones encouraged even greater adoption in the two decades since. Today, 93% of American adults report using the internet, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center.
While internet use is certainly common, some populations and parts of the country may face greater barriers to reliable internet access. Experts refer to a “digital divide” between those who have reliable access to internet technologies and those who do not. Low income, rural, and minority households all tend to have less access to quality internet service and related technologies. In some cases, these households cannot afford the cost of service, but in others, internet providers may not service their communities at all for financial or logistical reasons.
The Southeast is the region of the U.S. that lags furthest behind the rest of the country when it comes to broadband internet access, along with access to computers in the home. In Mississippi, for example, just over half (50.1%) of all households have access to broadband internet, and only around 64.2% have a desktop or laptop computer. In contrast, many states in the Northeast and West have much better access to technology. New Hampshire leads all states in the share of households with broadband internet access, at 79.9%, and Utah leads in the share of households with a computer, at 87.5%.
Further, there are some signs that states with fewer households able to access the internet also have worse internet quality overall. States with a higher percentage of households that have broadband also tend to have higher average download speeds. There is a similar but weaker correlation between the percentage of households with a computer and average download speeds.
Many of the states that lead in download speeds are densely populated and have strong economies, which helps service providers justify the cost of building infrastructure. States in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions are among those with the fastest internet, but residents of other well-populated and prospering states like California, Texas, and Florida also enjoy excellent internet speeds.
The internet speed data used in this analysis is from HighSpeedInternet.com’s Fastest and Slowest States for Internet Speeds report. Statistics on internet and computer access are from the U.S. Census Bureau and Pew Research Center. For the purpose of this analysis, statistics on broadband access include high-speed internet subscriptions, such as cable or DSL, and do not include cellular data plans. To determine the states with the fastest internet, researchers at HotDog.com ranked states based on the average download speed measured in megabits per second.
Here are the states with the fastest internet.
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Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (Authority) Executive Director Brandon Carson reminded Pennsylvanians of the important role they …
Jade Piros de Carvalho, director of the Office of Broadband Development in the Kansas Department of Commerce, talks about the need for broadband internet service across the state with a map of state grants for projects on Dec. 13 in the department’s offices in Topeka, Kansas.
A draft of the Federal Communications Commission’s new broadband map, a future version of which will determine how much of a $42.5 billion federal investment in high-speed internet each state gets. The darker the blue, the better the broadband coverage.
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