Mind the Map: The Hidden Impact of Inaccurate Broadband Availability Claims

The Federal Communications Commission reports that 19.6 million Americans lack access to a fixed 100/20 Mbps broadband service. A nationwide audit using 109,473 internet service provider‑address tests from October 2024 to March  2025 finds the true figure closer to 26 million, exposing a 6.4 million-person (33 percent) undercount. Discrepancies are not wholly uniform: they concentrate in rural Plains, Mountain West, and fast‑growing Sunbelt states, where reliance on self‑reported provider filings and long‑range fixed‑wireless deployments skews official maps. Mis‑measurement at this scale may misallocate billions of dollars from the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment program, undermine Rural Digital Opportunity Fund compliance enforcement, and weaken targeting of future affordability subsidies. This research details the audit methodology, quantifies state‑level errors, examines statistical patterns, and proposes a replicable geospatial monitoring framework to close the “mapping gap.”