How sparse is US rural broadband? FCC admits it doesn't know

With a national plan for broadband Internet deployment due in just nine months, a report published Wednesday by FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps -- still serving as Acting Chairman until the confirmation of Julius Genachowski gets back on track -- admits that the data on just how sparse broadband service is in the nation's rural areas has yet to be compiled. Less than a year before the deadline on action, the government literally doesn't know.

"Our efforts to bring robust and affordable broadband to rural America begin with a simple question: What is the current state of broadband in rural America?" Commissioner Copps writes (PDF available here). "We would like to answer this question definitively, and detail where broadband facilities are deployed, their speeds, and the number of broadband subscribers throughout rural America. Regrettably, we cannot. The Commission and other federal agencies simply have not collected the comprehensive and reliable data needed to answer this question. As the Commission has indicated, more needs to be done to obtain an accurate picture of broadband deployment and usage in America, including its rural areas."

A single footnote reference following this paragraph tells the rest of the story: The FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking back in April 2007, which would have set the ball rolling for the data collection process to begin. Immediately thereafter, as per protocol, the US Government Accountability Office weighed in on what they perceived as the arcane methods of data collection and processing up to that time. For example, the GAO noted that certain areas on national maps were considered "covered" by broadband if so much as one subscriber within that area received service. And with ZIP codes determining coverage areas, the more rural an area gets, the broader the range of its ZIP code.

Advocacy groups representing communities interested in building up the nation's broadband infrastructure cited the GAO's warning cry as vindication of what they'd been arguing since the turn of the decade. In response to that 2007 rulemaking proposal, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors and the US Conference of Mayors jointly issued a response to the FCC, citing the GAO report and emphasizing that the data collection process needed to begin in earnest.

"The Government Accounting Office openly criticized the current collection approach taken by the Commission, emphasizing in its report that 'the data may not provide a highly accurate depiction of local deployment of broadband infrastructures for residential service,'" their report to the FCC read (PDF available here). "The low standard by which a ZIP code is considered served as long as there is a single subscriber, along with a lack of detail with some statistics, raises doubts about the validity of the Commission's data -- data that claims broadband has reached 99% of the American population in 99% of ZIP codes...The need for a national broadband policy is clear, and local government national associations all support the development of such a policy. But before further progress can be made in that direction, one thing is clear: the need for more precise national broadband data."

The GAO report also sparked a response from Commissioner Copps, who at the time was not acting as FCC Chairman: "If the Commission had prudently invested in better broadband data-gathering a decade ago, I believe we'd all be better off-- not just the government, but more importantly, consumers and industry. We'd have a better handle on how to fix the problem because we'd have a better understanding of the problem. We would already have granular data, reported by carriers, on the range of broadband speeds and prices that consumers in urban, suburban, exurban, rural and tribal areas currently face. We would know which factors -- like age, gender, education, race, income, disability status, and so forth -- most affect consumer broadband decisions. We would understand how various markets respond to numerous variables. We could already be using our section 706 reports to inform Congress and the country of the realities of the broadband world as the basis for charting, finally, a strategy for the ubiquitous penetration of truly competitive high-speed broadband. I don't believe we'd be 21st in the world had we gone down that road. But that was the road not taken."

Now, over two years later, the Commission is no further along at gathering this data than it was in April 2007. But ironically, the man having to answer for that failure is the same man who called attention to it back then. So in an attempt to substitute what he called "a human face" for the lack of a clear nationwide picture, Comm. Copps cited a report from the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC), concerning the state of broadband deployment in just one city: Weirwood, Virginia, population 1,174 (2000 census).

As Copps relates in his Wednesday report, "Weirwood is an isolated rural community on Virginia's Eastern Shore, on the site of a former cotton plantation. Weirwood is only a mile and a half from U.S. Route 13, along which lies a broadband Internet backbone. The residents of Weirwood, however -- mostly African-American descendents of former slaves -- lack access to broadband. MMTC states that Weirwood has 'absolutely no ability to raise internally' the funds needed to build a broadband node to the community from the existing backbone line. Pending acquisition of thorough, reliable, and disaggregated data, we glimpse through Weirwood the state of broadband deployment in impoverished rural areas.

"Even without detailed maps of broadband service availability, we know that Weirwood is not unique," Copps continues. "Whether we are discussing a historically African-American community like Weirwood, Tribal lands that even now lack access to voice telephone service, or individuals with disabilities whose access to broadband is essential, overall, there needs to be an active federal governmental role if all Americans are to have access to robust and affordable broadband services. The challenge we face is determining ways to adjust our efforts to ensure that the residents in places like Weirwood, or anywhere in rural America, are able to take advantage of the opportunities that come with broadband."