WASHINGTON, D.C.—The FCC has released another revision of its broadband access maps that found nearly 330,000 additional locations not served by high speed broadband services. That boosts the total underserved broadband locations for homes and businesses to about 8.3 million.
The new maps released on May 30 revise those issued in November.
FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote in a blog post that the revised maps mean “the FCC is taking another step forward in its iterative effort to develop the best and most accurate broadband maps ever built in the United States. This is a big one.”
The November maps represented a major upgrade in detail from the FCC’s earlier broadband maps, which were based on census blocks, which “overstated service nationwide,” Rosenworcel said. “It also provided a less than accurate picture of unserved communities because it lacked the kind of granular data policymakers need if they want to address the digital divide.
“For context on how much more granular this is than what came before, in our current mapping effort the Commission identified over 114 million locations where fixed broadband could be installed compared to data from just 8.1 million census blocks in our prior maps,” Rosenworcel wrote.
Since then, the FCC has been receiving feedback from consumers, states, localities, Tribes and other stakeholders that led to revisions in the current maps released on May 30.
Commenting on the improvements to the maps since November, which “helped to identify nearly 330,000 more unserved locations,” Rosenworcel added that “stakeholders have stepped up to provide lots of information and challenges to our data. Our mapping team has reviewed challenges to availability data for more than 4 million locations. Over 75% of those challenges have already been resolved and the majority have led to updates in the data on the map showing where broadband is available. At the same time, the new map also reflects a net increase of more than one million new serviceable locations, as compared to the November 2022 pre-production draft.”
To make those improvements, the FCC “met individually with representatives from every state at least once, and, in total, hosted over 200 individual sessions with state, local, and Tribal governments,” she wrote. “We also responded to more than 7,600 technical assistance requests from internet providers and challengers.”
