The Federal Communications Commission's broadband data dramatically underestimates the number of Americans without access to home Internet service, a new study has found. The actual number of people lacking home-broadband access is about twice as high as the FCC estimate, the study found.

The FCC has said that 21.3 million Americans live in areas without access to fixed broadband with 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload speeds. But FCC data is widely known to be flawed, because it counts an entire census block as served even if only one home in the census block can get service.

The real number of Americans without access to wired or fixed wireless broadband is 42.8 million, slightly more than double the FCC estimate, according to the study released yesterday. The study was conducted by BroadbandNow, a company that provides an online tool for checking broadband availability.

Study methodology

BroadbandNow's estimate is based on checks of 11,663 house and apartment addresses that are all considered served by FCC data. BroadbandNow told us that the addresses were selected randomly and consist of a cross-section of rural and urban locations.

"BroadbandNow Research selected nine large ISPs with 'check availability' tools," the report explained. "These tools allow users to enter an address and receive a response as to whether wired and/or fixed wireless service is available." The company did not reveal which nine ISPs it evaluated but told Ars that "they are all among the largest ISPs that offer wired and fixed wireless service." The study excluded satellite broadband, which has much higher latency than cable, fiber, and fixed wireless services.

Each of the 11,663 addresses is located in census blocks where at least one of those nine ISPs reported offering service as of December 31, 2018, in Form 477 filings to the FCC. But at 13 percent of the addresses, BroadbandNow's review of "check availability" tools found that "none of the ISPs' tools indicate service is available."

For those 13 percent of addresses, FCC data indicates that about half "are also served by one or more local or hyper-local ISPs," BroadbandNow said.

"We were not able to check availability for local ISPs, and therefore conservatively assumed that residents of these addresses could receive broadband," the report said. This cut the 13 percent figure in half but still adds more than 21 million Americans to the "unserved" list when extrapolated to the entire US population of about 326 million. That's how BroadbandNow came up with an estimate of 42.8 million unserved Americans, compared to the FCC's estimate of 21.3 million.

Rural areas have bigger discrepancies between FCC-reported availability data and BroadbandNow estimates than urban ones, the report said. The study also provided estimates for each US state.

FCC distributes money before improving data

The BroadbandNow estimate might not be exactly right, since it evaluated a sample of addresses rather than all of the United States. But there's a good chance it's closer to the truth than FCC data, which doesn't correct for the limitation that ISPs report entire census blocks as served when they only serve one home in the block.

The BroadbandNow data might actually undercount the number of Americans without broadband, since ISPs' "check availability" tools sometimes show addresses being served when they are not.

The FCC has admitted its data doesn't accurately reflect the state of broadband deployment, and in August 2019, it voted to require home Internet providers to submit geospatial maps of where they provide service instead of merely reporting which census blocks they offer service in. Getting more accurate data is important in part because the numbers are used to determine which parts of the country get federal funding for expanding broadband. But FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is moving ahead with a new $20.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund before gathering new data from ISPs.

The FCC will use its current flawed data to distribute up to $16 billion to rural ISPs in the first phase of the program in a reverse auction slated to begin later this year. Phase 1 will target census blocks where there's no 25Mbps/3Mbps service. That means Phase 1 won't provide service to any unserved homes and businesses in census blocks where at least some locations have broadband.

After gathering more accurate data from ISPs, the FCC plans a second phase of the program to distribute the rest of the money.