The FCC has a new broadband map. Vermont officials say it vastly overstates reality.

November 23, 2022

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According to the Federal Communications Commission, more than 95% of Vermont households have broadband internet access.

That’s the main takeaway from a recently updated Map created by the committee that tracks internet speeds and provider availability down to individual addresses. But Vermont Community Broadband Board officials told VTDigger that the database overestimates the percentage of households with broadband — and that federal funding is at stake.

“I think a lot of Vermont residents will be very curious to see what the FCC claims is available compared to what’s available in their own realities,” said Robert Fish, deputy director of the board of directors.

The near 100% figure includes satellite internet providers like Starlink, which the commission claims is available statewide. Fish certainly said satellite is available – “if you look north and cut down all the trees and maybe blow up the top of a hill to get good coverage.”

But even comparing only the most common forms of broadband access — wired connections such as cable and fiber, and licensed wireless providers — the Vermont board disagreed with the federal commission’s assessment of multi-level availability.

The Vermont Department of Public Service sent a challenge to the FCC in October questioning the accuracy of the underlying address information. The department claimed that 11% of locations in the federal database did not match Vermont’s own database, and an additional 22% of addresses in Vermont’s database did not appear in the federal database, according to the challenge letter.

In addition, the commission’s data on whether a particular address has broadband technology is based on submissions from internet service providers themselves. Christine Hallquist, executive director of the Broadband Council, said “self-reported” data leads to many errors.

Wireless internet companies use things like propagation studies — computer-generated estimates of cell tower signal strength — to determine how far a signal should travel. But Vermont is full of “nooks and crannies” that can block signals, Hallquist said. “Some telecom companies will be more optimistic than others about what their service is.”

Fish said the department annually estimates the percentage of Vermonters who do not have wired or licensed wireless broadband with a download speed of more than 25 mbps and an upload speed of 3 mbps. In 2021, that percentage was around 20%. In contrast, the FCC appears to report that only 3% of addresses do not have internet at that speed or higher, according to the analysis by the board of directors’ committee.

He said there are ways the commission could have confirmed whether the service was actually available where providers said it was.

“If you … call random phone numbers in the middle of rural Vermont, they won’t tell you they have 25/3 service, certainly not 100/20 service,” Fish said.

The FCC did not respond to a request for comment on its data collection practices.

Hallquist said the map is more than just a way to track Internet access in the United States: federal funding through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program depends in part on the number of addresses in the state that don’t have fast enough internet speeds.

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The board is also working on the best way to ensure that “every address that is not served in Vermont is shown on the map as unserved,” Fish said, “so that we can fund our projects with the highest amount possible to make sure to ensure no one is left behind.”

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