[HN Gopher] FCC Broadband Map
___________________________________________________________________
FCC Broadband Map
Author : ezfe
Score : 103 points
Date : 2022-11-30 23:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (broadbandmap.fcc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (broadbandmap.fcc.gov)
| chewmieser wrote:
| This is great but also not 100% accurate. My address shows
| nothing but my neighbor's address shows all the various other
| options in the area. My area also got fiber ~ 2 months ago and
| it's not shown on this map at all.
|
| But still could have used something like this each time I moved
| and had to figure out what providers were in a particular
| location.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Sometimes it doesn't match the address to the dot on the map.
| My father's house shows nothing in address search but if I
| click the dot on his house I see his options.
| dihydro wrote:
| If I am remembering correctly, that is one of the goals of this
| map. Providers were lying or misrepresenting the serviced
| areas, and now the end user can challenge them on the service
| they say they are providing.
| bombcar wrote:
| Find your address, see what it says.
|
| If you see something that was NOT available, contact the provider
| and check if it is now available. If not, click "Challenge".
| eganist wrote:
| Lots of comments are misunderstanding the point of the map and
| think it's supposed to be perfectly accurate.
|
| No, that's not at all the point. The point is to allow
| individuals and businesses to challenge telecom self-attestations
| of coverage that are likely suspect. So if e.g SpaceX says you're
| currently served by Starlink but it turns out Starlink is
| refusing you on their site until the middle of next year, you can
| challenge the accuracy of Starlink's coverage map.
|
| Starlink used as an example. You can challenge anything, but so
| far I've had to challenge Starlink at every address I'm
| responsible for.
|
| Over time the map should be reliable, but for now, look for the
| Location Challenge and Availability Challenge links to see your
| options if you think a provider is misrepresenting coverage.
| dihydro wrote:
| We like to complain and not read the about page.
|
| "This map displays where Internet services are available across
| the United States, as reported by Internet Service Providers
| (ISPs) to the FCC. The map will be updated continuously to
| improve its accuracy through a combination of FCC verification
| efforts, new data from Internet providers, updates to the
| location data, and--importantly--information from the public."
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Arguably, the large federal government agency that we put
| lots of tax dollars into shouldn't be basing it's regulation
| on a map that requires significant donated time and effort,
| from large amounts of the public, to have any accuracy.
|
| The reality is that this map and effort was purposely done in
| a stupid and ineffective way as part of an effort by certain
| (FCC and/or presidential) administrations to say "No we don't
| need any more regulation, look at this map, america has the
| best internet".
| ninju wrote:
| Here a strange one...
|
| My address in Lafayette, IN is currently being served by a fiber
| provider, MetroNet (https://www.metronet.com/) but they are not
| listed as a provider (neither Residential nor Business)
|
| I wonder if fiber service is not counted as "broadband"...though
| I am getting 100Mbps (bidirectional)
| ezfe wrote:
| My previous address has Verizon FIOS but it's improperly
| attached to a shed on the corner of a property on the map,
| instead of the building itself.
| voakbasda wrote:
| This is so much bullshit.
|
| Satellite coverage should not be counted, because that requires a
| clear view of the sky. My property and most others in this area
| are covered in forest, so those options are right out.
|
| My only options are terrestrial, where the highest listed speed
| is 10Mbps. It is not fair for my local ISP to compete against
| entities that cannot possibly serve the same address.
| ezfe wrote:
| You can dispute it if you are unable to get satellite service,
| or filter it appropriately to only include landline service.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Apparently that means challenging each individual provider,
| and you must have tried to sign up with them and failed for
| them to take you seriously?
|
| Sorry, FCC, this map is less than worthless.
| axus wrote:
| People without broadband will put in a lot of effort to
| find service. Before there was no way to challenge the
| local providers, now there is.
| SigmundA wrote:
| That's like saying it's bullshit because you have to put up a
| pole or dig a trench to get a wire from the road to your house
| to get fiber. Or that solar irradiance maps are bullshit
| because you have trees.
|
| The provider gets the service to your property, its not their
| issue you have to modify your property to get it to your house
| and your equipment.
|
| Cut some trees down and or put the receiver up higher if you
| want to get the service currently delivered to the treetops on
| your property.
| voakbasda wrote:
| If I cut down the trees blocking my view, I would have enough
| cash in had to pay the local telco to drag fiber out to me.
| We are taking about dozens of old growth trees here. I feel
| that you would not be so brazen to suggest cutting them down
| if it were your own property. You can't force people to cut
| down a forest just to receive internet. That... is bullshit.
| pirate787 wrote:
| Satellite doesn't deliver to wooded property, that's not a
| realistic form of broadband access and shouldn't be counted
| in the coverage statistics. We deliver electricity to every
| household in America but somehow the corrupt land-line
| providers and their FCC apologists can't deliver terrestrial
| broadband on top of the same infrastructure.
| pxeboot wrote:
| > We deliver electricity to every household in America
|
| This is certainly not the case. There are many homes
| without electricity, especially in Alaska and other rural
| areas.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Solar doesn't deliver to a wooded property either, doesn't
| mean the solar maps are bullshit.
|
| You can cut trees down if you want satellite or solar, this
| is not impossible to do. You can dig a trench to run fiber
| from the road, but might be difficult if the ground has
| large boulders in it, you can run fiber on poles if you cut
| trees down to make room.
| voakbasda wrote:
| A solar map that marks areas with dense forest as having
| the same generation capacity as areas with open
| grasslands? Yeah, I would call that bullshit too.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| My understanding is at the federal level, OTARD allows you to
| install any sort of pylon or tower you need to get a clear view
| of the sky. You would need FCC / FAA approval as well, but if
| the structure is under 195 feet tall there is no formal process
| for that.
| meragrin wrote:
| What prevents you putting a dish up on a pole/post to get a
| signal?
| wil421 wrote:
| I would have to go 100 feet up just to get out of tree cover.
| My backyard has a stream that created a valley on either
| side. To get past the trees at the top of the little valley
| I'd have to go another 100 feet. If the coverage area was a
| 360 degree circle around my house I'd have less than 90
| degrees of clear sky. If the leaves are on the trees it less
| than that.
| ttt333 wrote:
| Not related, but your place sounds beautiful
| Karunamon wrote:
| I would go so far as to say that most satellite service (with
| the exception of Starlink; which doesn't help in your case
| sadly) should not be considered regular broadband internet for
| regulatory purposes owing to its extreme latency and bandwidth
| restrictions.
| goda90 wrote:
| In Wisconsin we have this map that I used heavily when searching
| for new apartments and house shopping. It has the ability to
| filter by wireline vs wireless and satellite, which is nice.
|
| https://maps.psc.wi.gov/apps/WisconsinBroadbandMap/
| bombcar wrote:
| I wish datasets like this were more integrated into Zillow and
| friends; being able to see at a glance what the neighborhood is
| wired for would be quite nice.
|
| Often a few blocks can be the difference between DSL and gig
| fiber.
| sebhook wrote:
| Starlink was a game-changer for me in the situation you
| described.
| dfee wrote:
| So I requested a quote from GeoLinks (bay area). They responded
| with a quote for business, to which I replied:
|
| > Residential quote, please. [EOM]
|
| They concluded:
|
| > Thank you for contacting GeoLinks! We have received your
| inquiry regarding GeoLinks' service in your area. Unfortunately,
| due to some data errors, the FCC's Broadband Data Collection map
| does not accurately reflect GeoLinks' service footprint. We are
| in the process of correcting the data provided to the FCC but it
| will take time for the map to be revised.
|
| > We apologize for any confusion this may have caused and hope
| that you will consider GeoLinks in the future when service is
| available in your area.
|
| Nice. Nowhere did I mention FCC; they must've felt the barrage of
| HN this AM it seems.
| dsmmcken wrote:
| Equivalent map for Canada:
| https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/sitt/bbmap/hm.html
|
| National Broadband Internet Service Availability Map
| throwaway4PP wrote:
| Why, when I lookup my address, do I not see my regional cable
| internet provider? Yet, when I search that provider, their
| service availability is shown as 100% in the hexagon covering our
| home.
|
| While I think I understand that the intention of this map is to
| document Telecom-asserted coverage such that users can contest
| inaccuracies, a beneficial flip-side (for me) is to ensure that
| my regional ISP is accurately represented.
|
| I'll take a non-Comcast/Verizon/National ISP over a National any
| day of the week. I want their coverage to be accurately
| documented.
| ezfe wrote:
| Because there's a data error on the map, and unfortunately you
| can only submit negative disputes, not positive ones.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| jeffdubin wrote:
| It's hard for me to take this data seriously when I enter an
| address that I know to be problematic for cellular coverage and
| receive "100% coverage" on the mobile broadband tab, and listed
| with carriers I know to have zero outdoor coverage at the
| location.
| pirate787 wrote:
| Same. For my home address it shows I'm "covered" because I have
| access to satellite internet, including Starlink, which is not
| actually available to me (I've been on the waitlist for going
| on two years).
| clsec wrote:
| Agreed. For one, the map has my zip code wrong. And two, I get
| very spotty reception at my house and get no reception at the
| local strip mall but both say I get 100% coverage.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Same. This map isn't accurate. Areas I know have no cell phone
| coverage are marked as 100% covered. Areas I know that don't
| have cable broadband show 100% covered. It's complete BS.
| ThaDood wrote:
| This is correct. They use census blocks for reporting. So all
| of these claims are widely over-represented. In theory if an
| ISP has "Broadband" to one household in a census block, the
| entire block then is considered to have "Broadband" access
| even if that is not the case.
|
| Wrote my thesis on US broadband the whole thing made my blood
| pressure go up.
| tomrod wrote:
| Report it up the chain. This is a map based on ISP-reported
| data. If there data is bad, the FCC can investigate. But the
| FCC isn't going to prove the reported data.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| I successfully used this map to report my local ISP
| informally to the FCC to have them run service to my home -
| which they said they could not locate on this map.
|
| Let that sink in.
| nszceta wrote:
| If you have no luck with wired internet give this a shot
| and try an antenna and cooling upgrade if it works at all
| to get really good speeds and low latency:
| https://www.t-mobile.com/home-internet/eligibility
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Prior to that I rolled my own unlimited data AT&T 4G LTE
| router while I tried to keep getting my local cable ISP
| to come to my house or simply acknowledge that they
| provided service to my address, according to the FCC.
|
| I did the pre-paid centurylink deal for one month, paid
| all fees up front, and returned everything to them on day
| 29. Centurylink .5 mbit DSL is absolutely useless.
|
| The AT&T 4G LTE I averaged 30mbit symetrical, maybe a 3/4
| of one United States imperial mile to my nearest tower.
|
| After filing the complaint, I had them trenching my back
| yard in two weeks running 360 feet (sorry I can't metric)
| of coax.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Same, but with fixed connectivity. Also, the definition of
| broadband is woefully inadequate: 25/3 Mbps
| philsnow wrote:
| For what it's worth, that's configurable under the gear icon.
| I changed it from "25/3 any technology" to "1000/100 fiber"
| and most of the green dots on the map area I was zoomed into
| changed to red.
| discreditable wrote:
| I had the same issue many years ago. Local ISP said fiber was
| available at my house. It was not. I reported it. A few months
| later I noticed they basically carved out my house even though
| I was quite sure my entire neighborhood was not served.
| eganist wrote:
| That's the whole point of the map. It's using data reported by
| telcos.
|
| They opened up the map so that individuals could challenge the
| coverage they're reportedly getting. My data was largely
| accurate other than SpaceX reporting coverage for addresses
| that are still waitlisted, so I challenged those.
| Fatnino wrote:
| What happens when the data is challenged? Is it corrected? Is
| the service provider fined?
| eganist wrote:
| No idea about fines but the FCC processed all my challenges
| and gave Starlink 60 days to respond.
|
| We'll see what happens after.
| dbatten wrote:
| Used to use some of this data for analyzing cellular service
| coverage. The info on cellular data (e.g., LTE) availability is
| provided by the cell providers and is usually... very optimistic.
|
| I'd assume the terrestrial fiber/cable/DSL data is more accurate,
| though?
| dihydro wrote:
| Not really, up until the past year or so, the cable ISPs would
| count an area serviced if they could get one house per zip
| code. I think this is stricter now, but these maps will help
| keep them accountable if we update and flag incorrect listings.
| davidjfelix wrote:
| What's going on in Bismarck, ND. If you set the map to wired
| 1000+ there's a huge radius of coverage and nothing down town.
| Light googling took me to BEK, a fiber coop in the area, but I
| can't reason with why there's no coverage in the city.
| focusedone wrote:
| Likely there's an for-profit electric company covering the city
| or possibly a city-owned company. Most electric coops are in
| rural areas, so when they do FTTH it'll only run to their
| members over existing poles.
|
| A huge barrier to getting FTTH is ROW negotiations and pole
| attachment costs. Coops don't have an issue adding fiber to
| their own poles but things get crazy quickly when they leave
| their footprint.
|
| It sucks to be in a city with no FTTH options while coop
| members two miles away have gig for a reasonable price. Coop
| fiber is awesome and I wish everyone had access to it.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| The California Internet 1000/1000 struck me as an outlier. Seems
| to be coming from some company called Geolinks, which doesn't
| seem to actually be offering that. In fact, it's unclear they're
| actually offering anything at the moment, they just "plan to".
|
| https://geolinks.com/caf-rates/
| brianlash wrote:
| My firm is working to improve the social determinants of
| health/health equity through better data and analytics. Broadband
| access risk is of central interest.
|
| We've incorporated this specific FCC data into our Equity Data
| Geo Explorer, which gives a visual of broadband risk (among
| others) down to the neighborhood level. [1]
|
| I welcome a conversation with anyone else who is working in this
| space. Email in bio.
|
| [1] http://www.magnushc.com/edge
| [deleted]
| alexcroox wrote:
| The clustering here is really misleading at the higher zoom
| levels. Shows 100% coverage when you hover on a large area, then
| you zoom in and find 50% of that same area has zero coverage.
| mlindner wrote:
| This is the map all the Starlink customers have issue with.
| There's tremendous mistakes throughout it and areas marked as
| having broadband often don't.
|
| Also the map is screwed up, as there is only "0%" and "100%"
| despite the scale having multiple values, they're never used.
| lxe wrote:
| > 25/3 Mbps or greater
|
| "Broadband" from 2002
| ed312 wrote:
| I wish they provided some justification for that target. IMO,
| "broadband access" should be defined as sufficient bandwidth
| for a family of 4 to simultaneously work/learn over video call
| with some slight overhead %. Ballpark 100mbps down 25 up.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I'm not sure what the inside baseball is on this but my
| suspicion is that telecom lobbying has a strong hand in this
| ridiculous definition of broadband.
| deweywsu wrote:
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| Seems accurate for my area in West Denver
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-02 23:01 UTC)