Microsoft Says the FCC 'Overstates' Broadband Availability In the US

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Microsoft this week was the latest to highlight the U.S. government's terrible broadband mapping in a filing with the FCC, first spotted by journalist Wendy Davis. In it, Microsoft accuses the FCC of over-stating actual broadband availability and urges the agency to do better. 'The Commission's broadband availability data, which underpins FCC Form 477 and the Commission's annual Section 706 report, appears to overstate the extent to which broadband is actually available throughout the nation,' Microsoft said in the filing. 'For example, in some areas the Commission's broadband availability data suggests that ISPs have reported significant broadband availability (25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up) while Microsoft's usage data indicates that only a small percentage of consumers actually access the Internet at broadband speeds in those areas,' Microsoft said.

Similar criticism has long plagued the agency. The FCC's broadband data is received via the form 477 data collected from ISPs. But ISPs have a vested interest in over-stating broadband availability to obscure the sector's competition problems, and the FCC historically hasn't worked very hard to independently verify whether this data is truly accurate. The FCC's methodology has long been criticized as well. As it currently stands, the agency declares an entire ZIP code as 'served' with broadband if just one home in an entire census block has it. In its filing, Microsoft 'suggested that the Commission's ongoing effort to more accurately measure broadband could be improved by drawing on the FCC's subscription data, along with other broadband data sets from third-parties such as Microsoft, to complement survey data submitted under the current rules.'

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