A wireless Internet service provider dumped a big load of map spam on the Federal Communications Commission last year, which appears to have fooled it into thinking that its “reforms” have brilliantly resulted in broadband “being deployed on a reasonable and timely basis” in the U.S. It’s a problem we have in California, as well.
In a letter to the FCC, the broadband advocacy group Free Press pointed to widely unbelievable – impossible – coverage claims made by BarrierFree, an east coat wireless Internet service provider…
BarrierFree claimed to offer FTTH service with downstream speeds of 940 Mbps to 100 percent of the geographic area and 100 percent of the population of New York State, and also to 100 percent of those seven other states. BarrierFree’s over-reporting in this manner not only produces wildly overinflated deployment claims for itself and these eight states: it also has a substantial impact on the putative change in deployment at the national level. Indeed, BarrierFree is claiming to be the only ISP offering service in 15 percent of all Census blocks that were listed as unserved in the June 2017 Form 477 data.
The coverage and service data submitted by BarrierFree go beyond the inflated claims routinely made by WISPs. It said it offered near-gigabit fiber to the home service to everyone in those eight states, along with its implausible wireless product.
Although BarrierFree’s false reporting is unusual in its scope, it’s a common and chronic problem with the FCC’s broadband data collection system. And it’s not limited to WISPs. In California, companies that resell capacity on other companies’ lines say they’re providing service in tens of thousands of census blocks, when in reality they, at best, have agreements that might let them offer service if anyone asks for it and the underlying carriers have lines of sufficient quality available – not a sure bet by a long shot.
The FCC should have reviewed BarrierFree’s data before accepting it, let alone doing a victory dance based on it. It’s gullability such as this that’s led to bipartisan calls for better broadband data collection and mapping, even to the extent of getting a call out in the Trump administration’s latest budget proposal.