Mapping Broadband Internet Coverage at the Household Level

Abstract

It is a priority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ensure that all Americans have access to broadband internet and thereby close the “digital divide”. As such, the FCC mandates that all Internet Services Providers (ISPs) file a Form 477 specifying the geographic areas to which they provide broadband service. However, through Form 477, ISPs report their coverage data at the granularity of census blocks, where they can claim they cover an entire block as long as they can cover a single household within that block. This has raised concerns that the FCC’s data overstates the level of broadband coverage in the U.S. We sought to measure the accuracy of the FCC’s data by building a map of broadband coverage in multiple states at the granularity of households, where we verified that individual households have access to broadband service from an ISP using that ISP’s public availability tool. Based on our data, we conclude that the FCC’s data overstates the overall coverage of each ISP, the number of Americans with access to adequate broadband, and the level of competition among ISPs. We also found each coverage overstatement to be disproportionately large in rural areas. We estimate that an additional 2.17% of Americans do not have access to adequate broadband, increasing the FCC’s overall estimate of the number of Americans without adequate broadband by a third. Based on our results, we recommend that the FCC stop widely publicizing Form 477 data and work to collect coverage data at the granularity of households.