FCC: 25M Americans Lack Broadband, Microsoft: It's 162M

It’s a problem of data collection and asking the right questions, which Microsoft has now recommended how to fix.

Microsoft is concerned that increased broadband adoption in America isn’t happening despite $22 billion of subsidies and grants over the past five years. Now it turns out statistics the FCC puts out regarding access to a broadband connection are way off the mark.

As far as Microsoft is concerned, access to broadband is a positive for everyone and leads to economic well-being, including creating more jobs and growing GDP. What didn’t sit right with Microsoft was the fact broadband adoption has “barely budged” despite all those billions being pumped into the system, so it carried out a review.

The FCC claims that 24.7 million Americans do not currently have broadband available to use, with broadband classified as at least 25Mbps download speeds and 3Mbps uploads. However, Microsoft decided to carry out its own review using anonymized data collected “as part of our ongoing work to improve the performance and security of our software and services.” The results are eye-opening, with Microsoft counting 162.8 million Americans who don’t currently use the internet at broadband speeds.

The data Microsoft collected apparently lines up well with both the FCC broadband subscription data and Pew Research numbers, and yet it shows there’s over five-times as many people not using broadband. The conclusion Microsoft settled on was that, “today there exists no accurate, comprehensive and public estimate of broadband coverage in the United States.”

The problem stems from the FCC asking the wrong questions, or not asking specific enough questions. The current form (Form 477) used to assess broadband access is very broad and answering “yes” to a single question assumes an entire area is covered when in most of the 50 states this is a false claim. It also doesn’t help that the FCC data is based on census block, which doesn’t suit large and sparsely populated rural areas. If one person has broadband in a rural location, it is assumed everyone within that census block also has access. It’s therefore not accurate.

After reviewing the data, Microsoft settled on three recommendations which it shared with the Commerce Committee. They include changing wording on the Form 477 to be more clear, requiring availability and usage/subscription data to be used when guiding future investment, and fixing the methodology behind data collection and reporting prior to new broadband mapping reports being released.

If the recommendations get implemented, it should allow money to be better invested and ultimately could see a marked improvement in broadband coverage across the states.