Measuring Broadband at the FCC: A Peculiar Approach

The Federal Communications Commission’s Section 706 Reports are a useful source for information on broadband deployment, even if largely used by Democratic administrations to justify regulation. Armed now with the new broadband fabric data, which attempt to measure broadband availability down to the location level, the FCC’s staff is faced with some new complexities. Summary statistics provided in the Report require linking the finely-tuned broadband data to population statistics. The problem is that the fabric collects data for Broadband Serviceable Locations while the Census Bureau only collects data down to the census block level, and it does so only every ten years. Population, therefore, must be allocated to the Broadband Service Location by some mechanism to produce population-averaged statistics. This Perspective discusses the statistical procedure used by the FCC—summarized in its 2024 Section 706 Report (the most recent Section 706 Report available)—to do so. While the FCC’s approach seemed interesting at first glance, it turns out to be a bad idea, as it is used for the wrong purpose.