Broadband DATA Act Unanimously Passes Senate

The Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability (DATA) Act unanimously passed the Senate. The bill would:

• Require the Federal Communications Commission to collect granular service availability data from wired, fixed wireless, and satellite broadband providers.
• Set strong parameters for service availability data collected from mobile broadband providers to ensure accuracy.
• Permit the FCC to consider whether to collect verified coverage data from state, local, and tribal governments, as well as from other entities.
• Create a process for consumers; state, local, and tribal governments; and other groups to challenge FCC maps with their own data and requires the FCC to determine how to structure that process without making it overly burdensome on challengers.
• Establish a crowdsourcing process that allows the public to participate in data collection.
• Strengthen enforcement against providers that willfully and knowingly, or recklessly submit materially inaccurate broadband data.
• Require the FCC to use the newly-created maps when making new awards of broadband funding.