About 26 million Americans lack access to fixed-wire broadband connectivity with speeds of at least 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload, according to a new report from BroadbandNow. The organization says that is 6.4 million — 33% — more than the 19.6 million estimated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
It is an important difference, according to BroadbandNow, which based its estimate on a nationwide audit of 109,473 addresses.
The report points out that the FCC relies on Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric and associated operator-reported availability maps.
Other findings from the report:
- Technology-specific over-reporting: 65% of audited addresses can’t order a 100/20 Mbps broadband plan today, even though the FCC says they are served by fiber. That is also true of 48.7% of listed addresses, fixed wireless access 44.6% and cable systems 14.5%.
- State-level extremes: Iowa and New Mexico miss more than 60% of their truly unserved residents. In California, the difference between those stated to be served by fiber and those that actually can provide it is 446,000 locations.
- $14 billion at stake: A 33% mapping error could misroute roughly $14 in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding away from communities that need it.
“Discrepancies are not wholly uniform: they concentrate in rural Plains, Mountain West, and fast‑growing Sunbelt states, where reliance on self‑reported provider filings and long‑range fixed‑wireless deployments skews official maps,” BroadbandNow editor-in-chief Tyler Cooper wrote in the broadband report.
“Mis‑measurement at this scale may misallocate billions of dollars from the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, undermine Rural Digital Opportunity Fund compliance enforcement, and weaken targeting of future affordability subsidies.”
The weakness of federal mapping may be distorting a fluid landscape. Last month, a Tarifica study entitled “US Broadband Study: Weak Pricing Power Below 1Gbps, Big Premiums at the Top,” found that the 500 Mbps tier has replaced the 100 Mbps tier as the entry-level standard for broadband service in the U.S.
The trends likely will continue to be erratic. Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence broadband report for the second half of last year, which was released in April, had contradictory results. It found that while many states made “sizable gains” last year, there was no “sweeping improvement” in the digital divide.
The reason that both can be true is not surprising: The ending of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) on June 1, 2024 took broadband away from a sizable portion of the 23 million participants, even as growing investment added subscribers.
Still, overall progress was good. Fiber broadband deployments reached a new annual record of 10.3 million U.S. homes passed last year, according to a report from the Fiber Broadband Association.
The firm found there were 88.1 million homes with fiber if homes with more than a single passing are counted. Growth is expected to continue during the next five years, according to the association.
