Pai Warns Funding Isn't Available as FCC Acts on Broadband Mapping

The FCC needs funding before it can implement a March broadband data law (see 2003240049), Pai said. “Congress actually took away from us the only source of funding that was available for this vital work by prohibiting the Universal Service Administrative Co. from being involved in this project,” he said: “Congress must give us the resources we need. … We need money before maps, dollars before data.” Pai told reporters the FCC has no options to act without funding.

Rosenworcel slammed the decision to hold the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction before maps are ready. “We are going to gather all of this precise data about where broadband is and is not, but we are not going to use any of it this fall when we distribute $16 billion in funding for improved broadband service across the country,” she said. “We have this backwards. We are giving out funding before rolling up our sleeves and doing the hard work to fix our maps.”

With the item, the agency is “climbing out of the tremendous hole we’ve dug,” Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said. The commission adopted “more realistic maximum buffers for wireline networks,” he said. We also “vastly pare down or seek further comment on the colossally burdensome and highly sensitive infrastructure information being requested from wireless providers, and at the very least, treat this information as presumptively confidential,” he said. Commissioners “were able to work together to find a suitable landing spot on this issue,” he said.

Fixing the maps is critical, O’Rielly said, questioning why the FCC waited until the end of the meeting to vote on the item. “For years, maybe even a decade or more, almost everyone has acknowledged that the Form 477 data was deficient to determine broadband coverage in America,” he said: The reporting form “was never meant to be used for this purpose and provided, at best, just a raw snapshot of a provider’s coverage.”

The FCC should have acted more quickly, Starks said. “We are leaving real people behind, knowingly, when we make funding decisions based on data that blinds us to the reality of internet inequality in many places,” he said. Starks will “oppose efforts to rush the 5G Fund out the door without first fixing our maps.” The FCC also shouldn’t hold the first phase of the RDOF auction without accurate maps, he said.

Commissioner Brendan Carr said the agency was right to move the infrastructure data collection from the order to the NPRM. “We have made clear that while this information is of great public importance, providers can still seek confidential treatment for sensitive information,” he said. The FCC’s “now infamous Form 477” is out of date and “was never designed to produce the type of granular data needed to generate detailed broadband coverage maps,” he said.

USTelecom urged Congress to fund the maps. “Especially at a time when our country is relying on its communications infrastructure more than ever, modernizing our maps could not be more essential and smart policy,” the group said.

“Timely, relevant and accurate broadband maps are essential to identifying policies that can help deliver mobile broadband service to Americans in communities across the country, especially in rural areas,” said Matt Gerst, CTIA vice president-regulatory affairs. NTCA is “grateful that it appears that the Commission has adjusted the mapping ‘buffers’ proposed for fiber to more appropriately reflect the substantial capabilities of this technology and the realities of deploying networks in rural America,” said CEO Shirley Bloomfield.