Congress Thinks New FCC Maps Will Fix the Digital Divide. But We Need Much More.

In March 2020, the House and Senate passed the Broadband DATA Act unanimously and President Donald Trump signed it into law. Lawmakers seem to think the new data will itself fix the homework gap. But we need Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to improve data for all the factors that prevent Americans from using broadband service—including affordability and the speeds you’ll actually get in rural areas. Former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai liked to tout that the number of Americans without broadband access “fell to 14.5 million” or 4.4 percent, “a 46% decrease from the end of 2016” through 2019. But the census’s American Community Survey shows 35.9 million American households (approximately 93.7 million people) lack broadband service, which is 29.2 percent of all households and a decrease of a mere 7.6 percent since 2016. Offering every American broadband won’t close the homework gap if they can’t afford it or don’t sign up. This is all the more important because of the potential challenges with Congress’ plan for new maps, which could not be more different from how the FCC currently collects this data. Both the advanced technology used to identify rooftop locations and the maps submitted by the ISPs will need to be thoroughly tested against existing data for accuracy. Whereas currently the FCC data sits on top of the census’s information, in the future, everything will be based on new “serviceable locations” identified by this fabric—which means that the government has to move with care and caution. If you replace the foundation of your house, you don’t want to rip out the existing foundation all at once, then try to build in a new one. The house will fall. Instead, you take pieces of the foundation out, and carefully build in new ones.