FCC Broadband Map | Hacker News Reader

FCC Broadband Map

broadbandmap.fcc.gov

109 pointsezfe63 comments

Lots of comments are misunderstanding the point of the map and think it's supposed to be perfectly accurate.

No, that's not at all the point. The point is to allow individuals and businesses to challenge telecom self-attestations of coverage that are likely suspect. So if e.g SpaceX says you're currently served by Starlink but it turns out Starlink is refusing you on their site until the middle of next year, you can challenge the accuracy of Starlink's coverage map.

Starlink used as an example. You can challenge anything, but so far I've had to challenge Starlink at every address I'm responsible for.

Over time the map should be reliable, but for now, look for the Location Challenge and Availability Challenge links to see your options if you think a provider is misrepresenting coverage.

We like to complain and not read the about page.

"This map displays where Internet services are available across the United States, as reported by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to the FCC. The map will be updated continuously to improve its accuracy through a combination of FCC verification efforts, new data from Internet providers, updates to the location data, and—importantly—information from the public."

Arguably, the large federal government agency that we put lots of tax dollars into shouldn't be basing it's regulation on a map that requires significant donated time and effort, from large amounts of the public, to have any accuracy.

The reality is that this map and effort was purposely done in a stupid and ineffective way as part of an effort by certain (FCC and/or presidential) administrations to say "No we don't need any more regulation, look at this map, america has the best internet".

> Arguably, the large federal government agency that we put lots of tax dollars into shouldn't be basing it's regulation on a map that requires significant donated time and effort, from large amounts of the public, to have any accuracy.

What's your estimate on how many dollars it would take for the FCC to annually and independently validate connectivity at every address?

Exactly this. I filed an FCC complaint regarding speeds at my house and got Spectrum off their ass and investigating. Our neighborhood is a new build with fiber instead of coax that should be getting 500mbit upload on their Gig plan but not all houses receive it, mine included. Finally spoke to a local supervisor yesterday after going through first line support for over a week and he noticed that people even on the same node receive it while I'm stuck at 35mbit upload so that's progress and hopefully a catalyst for getting it resolved finally.

It just looks sad right now: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/063d05b6-eae5-4534-99a3-f... -- that upload is pitiful for fiber.

It's hard for me to take this data seriously when I enter an address that I know to be problematic for cellular coverage and receive "100% coverage" on the mobile broadband tab, and listed with carriers I know to have zero outdoor coverage at the location.

Same. This map isn’t accurate. Areas I know have no cell phone coverage are marked as 100% covered. Areas I know that don’t have cable broadband show 100% covered. It’s complete BS.

Report it up the chain. This is a map based on ISP-reported data. If there data is bad, the FCC can investigate. But the FCC isn't going to prove the reported data.

I successfully used this map to report my local ISP informally to the FCC to have them run service to my home - which they said they could not locate on this map.

Let that sink in.

If you have no luck with wired internet give this a shot and try an antenna and cooling upgrade if it works at all to get really good speeds and low latency: https://www.t-mobile.com/home-internet/eligibility

Prior to that I rolled my own unlimited data AT&T 4G LTE router while I tried to keep getting my local cable ISP to come to my house or simply acknowledge that they provided service to my address, according to the FCC.

I did the pre-paid centurylink deal for one month, paid all fees up front, and returned everything to them on day 29. Centurylink .5 mbit DSL is absolutely useless.

The AT&T 4G LTE I averaged 30mbit symetrical, maybe a 3/4 of one United States imperial mile to my nearest tower.

After filing the complaint, I had them trenching my back yard in two weeks running 360 feet (sorry I can't metric) of coax.

This is correct. They use census blocks for reporting. So all of these claims are widely over-represented. In theory if an ISP has "Broadband" to one household in a census block, the entire block then is considered to have "Broadband" access even if that is not the case.

Wrote my thesis on US broadband the whole thing made my blood pressure go up.

Same, but with fixed connectivity. Also, the definition of broadband is woefully inadequate: 25/3 Mbps

For what it's worth, that's configurable under the gear icon. I changed it from "25/3 any technology" to "1000/100 fiber" and most of the green dots on the map area I was zoomed into changed to red.

I had the same issue many years ago. Local ISP said fiber was available at my house. It was not. I reported it. A few months later I noticed they basically carved out my house even though I was quite sure my entire neighborhood was not served.

Same. For my home address it shows I'm "covered" because I have access to satellite internet, including Starlink, which is not actually available to me (I've been on the waitlist for going on two years).

Agreed. For one, the map has my zip code wrong. And two, I get very spotty reception at my house and get no reception at the local strip mall but both say I get 100% coverage.

That's the whole point of the map. It's using data reported by telcos.

They opened up the map so that individuals could challenge the coverage they're reportedly getting. My data was largely accurate other than SpaceX reporting coverage for addresses that are still waitlisted, so I challenged those.

What happens when the data is challenged? Is it corrected? Is the service provider fined?

No idea about fines but the FCC processed all my challenges and gave Starlink 60 days to respond.

We'll see what happens after.

In Wisconsin we have this map that I used heavily when searching for new apartments and house shopping. It has the ability to filter by wireline vs wireless and satellite, which is nice.

https://maps.psc.wi.gov/apps/WisconsinBroadbandMap/

I wish datasets like this were more integrated into Zillow and friends; being able to see at a glance what the neighborhood is wired for would be quite nice.

Often a few blocks can be the difference between DSL and gig fiber.

Starlink was a game-changer for me in the situation you described.

This is so much bullshit.

Satellite coverage should not be counted, because that requires a clear view of the sky. My property and most others in this area are covered in forest, so those options are right out.

My only options are terrestrial, where the highest listed speed is 10Mbps. It is not fair for my local ISP to compete against entities that cannot possibly serve the same address.

You can dispute it if you are unable to get satellite service, or filter it appropriately to only include landline service.

Apparently that means challenging each individual provider, and you must have tried to sign up with them and failed for them to take you seriously?

Sorry, FCC, this map is less than worthless.

People without broadband will put in a lot of effort to find service. Before there was no way to challenge the local providers, now there is.

What prevents you putting a dish up on a pole/post to get a signal?

I would have to go 100 feet up just to get out of tree cover. My backyard has a stream that created a valley on either side. To get past the trees at the top of the little valley I’d have to go another 100 feet. If the coverage area was a 360 degree circle around my house I’d have less than 90 degrees of clear sky. If the leaves are on the trees it less than that.

Not related, but your place sounds beautiful

That's like saying it's bullshit because you have to put up a pole or dig a trench to get a wire from the road to your house to get fiber. Or that solar irradiance maps are bullshit because you have trees.

The provider gets the service to your property, its not their issue you have to modify your property to get it to your house and your equipment.

Cut some trees down and or put the receiver up higher if you want to get the service currently delivered to the treetops on your property.

Satellite doesn't deliver to wooded property, that's not a realistic form of broadband access and shouldn't be counted in the coverage statistics. We deliver electricity to every household in America but somehow the corrupt land-line providers and their FCC apologists can't deliver terrestrial broadband on top of the same infrastructure.

Solar doesn't deliver to a wooded property either, doesn't mean the solar maps are bullshit.

You can cut trees down if you want satellite or solar, this is not impossible to do. You can dig a trench to run fiber from the road, but might be difficult if the ground has large boulders in it, you can run fiber on poles if you cut trees down to make room.

A solar map that marks areas with dense forest as having the same generation capacity as areas with open grasslands? Yeah, I would call that bullshit too.

Well guess I can't buy a empty lot in a forested area and use an irradiance map to calculate how much solar capacity I would have with my plans, nor can I lookup my Starlink coverage with the FCC map because according to you that would be bullshit due to the trees that I plan on clearing...

> We deliver electricity to every household in America

This is certainly not the case. There are many homes without electricity, especially in Alaska and other rural areas.

If I cut down the trees blocking my view, I would have enough cash in had to pay the local telco to drag fiber out to me. We are taking about dozens of old growth trees here. I feel that you would not be so brazen to suggest cutting them down if it were your own property. You can’t force people to cut down a forest just to receive internet. That… is bullshit.

I would go so far as to say that most satellite service (with the exception of Starlink; which doesn't help in your case sadly) should not be considered regular broadband internet for regulatory purposes owing to its extreme latency and bandwidth restrictions.

My understanding is at the federal level, OTARD allows you to install any sort of pylon or tower you need to get a clear view of the sky. You would need FCC / FAA approval as well, but if the structure is under 195 feet tall there is no formal process for that.

The clustering here is really misleading at the higher zoom levels. Shows 100% coverage when you hover on a large area, then you zoom in and find 50% of that same area has zero coverage.

Why, when I lookup my address, do I not see my regional cable internet provider? Yet, when I search that provider, their service availability is shown as 100% in the hexagon covering our home.

While I think I understand that the intention of this map is to document Telecom-asserted coverage such that users can contest inaccuracies, a beneficial flip-side (for me) is to ensure that my regional ISP is accurately represented.

I'll take a non-Comcast/Verizon/National ISP over a National any day of the week. I want their coverage to be accurately documented.

Because there's a data error on the map, and unfortunately you can only submit negative disputes, not positive ones.

This is great but also not 100% accurate. My address shows nothing but my neighbor's address shows all the various other options in the area. My area also got fiber ~ 2 months ago and it's not shown on this map at all.

But still could have used something like this each time I moved and had to figure out what providers were in a particular location.

Sometimes it doesn't match the address to the dot on the map. My father's house shows nothing in address search but if I click the dot on his house I see his options.

If I am remembering correctly, that is one of the goals of this map. Providers were lying or misrepresenting the serviced areas, and now the end user can challenge them on the service they say they are providing.

Equivalent map for Canada: https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/sitt/bbmap/hm.html

National Broadband Internet Service Availability Map

The California Internet 1000/1000 struck me as an outlier. Seems to be coming from some company called Geolinks, which doesn't seem to actually be offering that. In fact, it's unclear they're actually offering anything at the moment, they just "plan to".

https://geolinks.com/caf-rates/

So I requested a quote from GeoLinks (bay area). They responded with a quote for business, to which I replied:

> Residential quote, please. [EOM]

They concluded:

> Thank you for contacting GeoLinks! We have received your inquiry regarding GeoLinks’ service in your area. Unfortunately, due to some data errors, the FCC’s Broadband Data Collection map does not accurately reflect GeoLinks’ service footprint. We are in the process of correcting the data provided to the FCC but it will take time for the map to be revised.

> We apologize for any confusion this may have caused and hope that you will consider GeoLinks in the future when service is available in your area.

Nice. Nowhere did I mention FCC; they must've felt the barrage of HN this AM it seems.

Used to use some of this data for analyzing cellular service coverage. The info on cellular data (e.g., LTE) availability is provided by the cell providers and is usually... very optimistic.

I'd assume the terrestrial fiber/cable/DSL data is more accurate, though?

Not really, up until the past year or so, the cable ISPs would count an area serviced if they could get one house per zip code. I think this is stricter now, but these maps will help keep them accountable if we update and flag incorrect listings.

> 25/3 Mbps or greater

"Broadband" from 2002

I wish they provided some justification for that target. IMO, "broadband access" should be defined as sufficient bandwidth for a family of 4 to simultaneously work/learn over video call with some slight overhead %. Ballpark 100mbps down 25 up.

I'm not sure what the inside baseball is on this but my suspicion is that telecom lobbying has a strong hand in this ridiculous definition of broadband.

Find your address, see what it says.

If you see something that was NOT available, contact the provider and check if it is now available. If not, click "Challenge".

Here a strange one...

My address in Lafayette, IN is currently being served by a fiber provider, MetroNet (https://www.metronet.com/) but they are not listed as a provider (neither Residential nor Business)

I wonder if fiber service is not counted as "broadband"...though I am getting 100Mbps (bidirectional)

My previous address has Verizon FIOS but it's improperly attached to a shed on the corner of a property on the map, instead of the building itself.

Seems to be too optimistic. My location has listed Frontier fiber but in reality they just put conduits underground few weeks ago and now pulling the fiber through the streets.

https://www.broadbandmap.ca.gov/ is much more attached to reality in Aalifornia

This is the map all the Starlink customers have issue with. There's tremendous mistakes throughout it and areas marked as having broadband often don't.

Also the map is screwed up, as there is only "0%" and "100%" despite the scale having multiple values, they're never used.

It is incomplete and inaccurate. i.e. current service I have is not reported in the map, service drops we no longer use but still exist in the demarc are not reported. Perhaps one day it will be useful, but in the 6 locations I could use it for it was inadequate.

What's going on in Bismarck, ND. If you set the map to wired 1000+ there's a huge radius of coverage and nothing down town. Light googling took me to BEK, a fiber coop in the area, but I can't reason with why there's no coverage in the city.

Likely there's an for-profit electric company covering the city or possibly a city-owned company. Most electric coops are in rural areas, so when they do FTTH it'll only run to their members over existing poles.

A huge barrier to getting FTTH is ROW negotiations and pole attachment costs. Coops don't have an issue adding fiber to their own poles but things get crazy quickly when they leave their footprint.

It sucks to be in a city with no FTTH options while coop members two miles away have gig for a reasonable price. Coop fiber is awesome and I wish everyone had access to it.

Seems accurate for my area in West Denver

My firm is working to improve the social determinants of health/health equity through better data and analytics. Broadband access risk is of central interest.

We’ve incorporated this specific FCC data into our Equity Data Geo Explorer, which gives a visual of broadband risk (among others) down to the neighborhood level. [1]

I welcome a conversation with anyone else who is working in this space. Email in bio.

[1] http://www.magnushc.com/edge

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