FCC Finally Orders ISPs To Say Exactly Where They Offer Broadband (arstechnica.com) 30
The FCC voted today to collect more accurate data about which parts of the U.S. have broadband and which parts lack high-speed connectivity. "From now on, home Internet providers will have to give the FCC geospatial maps of where they provide service instead of merely reporting which census blocks they offer service in," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The FCC's current broadband mapping system has serious limitations. The Form 477 data-collection program that requires ISPs to report census-block coverage lets an ISP count an entire census block as served even if it can serve just one home in the block. There are millions of census blocks across the US, and each one generally contains between 600 and 3,000 people. Perhaps even worse, ISPs can count a census block as served in some cases where they don't provide any broadband in the block. That's because the FCC tells ISPs to report where they could offer service "without an extraordinary commitment of resources." An ISP could thus count a census block as served if it's near its network facilities, but in practice ISPs have charged homeowners tens of thousands of dollars for line extensions.
Pai's mapping order (full text) says it "will collect geospatial broadband coverage maps from Internet service providers," and create a crowdsourcing system to collect public input on the accuracy of ISP-submitted maps. ISPs could still count homes that aren't currently connected to their networks, but the FCC has tightened the criteria for doing so. ISPs may only count an area as served if the ISP "has a current broadband connection or it could provide such a connection within ten business days of a customer request and without an extraordinary commitment of resources or construction costs exceeding an ordinary service activation fee." The new requirements are limited to fixed broadband providers, those that offer non-mobile service in homes and businesses.
Pai's mapping order (full text) says it "will collect geospatial broadband coverage maps from Internet service providers," and create a crowdsourcing system to collect public input on the accuracy of ISP-submitted maps. ISPs could still count homes that aren't currently connected to their networks, but the FCC has tightened the criteria for doing so. ISPs may only count an area as served if the ISP "has a current broadband connection or it could provide such a connection within ten business days of a customer request and without an extraordinary commitment of resources or construction costs exceeding an ordinary service activation fee." The new requirements are limited to fixed broadband providers, those that offer non-mobile service in homes and businesses.
It isn't an exact science (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially for WISPs (fixed wireless) because of terrain, trees, buildings and other objects that might block a signal. Sure, other ISPs that offer copper and fiber to the door will know exactly where they can offer service.
Re: It isn't an exact science (Score:1, Insightful)
Shill? Or apologist?
Either way it will be fun to see how this gets games or "overturned in the courts" or some shit.
Re: (Score:2)
actually, that offers a possible answer to my reflexive question "why is Pai doing this? How's this going to benefit the ISPs?" If the wired guys can make it hard for the wireless guys to claim good coverage they look better.
Re:It isn't an exact science (Score:5, Interesting)
Who gets paper insulated wireline, POTS, coaxial, "fiber", "fiber" to the kerb. Internet over 5G?
Re: (Score:3)
Faster services can then be engineered for all AC. Once the areas kept on paper insulated wireline get found.
Re: (Score:2)
With 5G AC?
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly where they offer service, or exactly where they can actually provide service, and guarantee a service level? Because they offer service in a lot of areas and a lot of speed tiers that they can't actually meet on a consistent basis.
Re: (Score:2)
Great - let's have the customer pay to have it installed first. Then we can see that it doesn't work.
Put them to the test (Score:5, Interesting)
Choose a few homes in fringe areas of the map that are claimed to be served (especially where only one or two homes in a census block are claimed) and pay the homeowner to request service. If they don't get it or if a construction fee is charged on top of normal installation, fine the ISP heavily.
Re: (Score:3)
That would make entirely too much sense for an administration as corrupt as the FCC.
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I think they'll fix it this time. ISPs have been doing their best to hide the real data, but it can't have escaped everyone's attention that Trump's constituency are generally much more strongly represented in the areas that are being the most screwed over by the lies - that is the rural and farmland areas, and generally less-populated heartland territory.
Re:LOL what a funny country. (Score:4, Informative)
You're not that far off. NPR did a story about rural areas with either no or extremely limited service [wbur.org]. It's so limited, it can't even be considered broadband. It is still closer to dial up.
A story they did last year talks about rural communities creating their own service [npr.org].
TFAs relationship with basic math (Score:5, Interesting)
"There are millions of census blocks across the US, and each one generally contains between 600 and 3,000 people."
Total number of census blocks: 11M
Total population of US: 330M
330M People / 11M Blocks = 30 people per census block.
The problem with the broadband deployment maps had virtually nothing to do with granularity and everything to do with quality of underlying data.
A big chunk of bad press was generated by handful of ISPs who fucked up and did stupid shit with the data they submitted that made it seem like service was available everywhere. The FCC could have easily caught these mistakes had they felt compelled to demonstrate a basic level of competence. They could have for example cross checked subscription and deployment data.
Majority of the remaining issues comes down to data quality from the ISPs especially small shops who were lazy with representation, don't know what they are doing or simply don't have means of automatically qualifying service area without manually qualifying each potential new customer.
I personally like the map scheme better because that's what everyone was doing anyway and then running a lossy spatial query to get block lists. The FCC is fooling itself if it believes this is going to appreciably improve data quality. It's certainly a step in the right direction but they need to show leadership and do actual work for quality to improve.
Quotation error by Ars, not a math error (Score:5, Informative)
(30 people/block) * (39 blocks/group) = 1170 people/group, which indeed falls within the 600-3000 range stated in TFA.
It's also worth pointing out that nearly 5 million census blocks have a population of zero [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
The 600-1500 figure is for census block groups.
(30 people/block) * (39 blocks/group) = 1170 people/group, which indeed falls within the 600-3000 range stated in TFA.
Why is this not completely irrelevant? What do block groups have to do with either the actual data reporting or TFA?
Form 477 deployment data upload is collecting BLOCK level data not block groups.
TFA is explicitly talking about BLOCKS "There are millions of census blocks across the US, and each one generally contains between 600 and 3,000 people."
There are also not millions of block groups.
It's also worth pointing out that nearly 5 million census blocks have a population of zero.
It's true that census blocks have issues. In many developed areas they generally represent actual city blocks. In ex
Re: (Score:2)
I should add not only are census blocks totally irrelevant to actual data collected and presented so is the underlying metric. What matters WRT to block level accuracy relative to deployment of access is land area not counts of people within a block.
Serious shock (Score:2)