New FCC broadband standard increases the number of ‘underserved’ households in America

The Federal Communications Commission last month raised the speeds required to describe internet service as “broadband” for the first time in nearly a decade. The higher benchmark was released alongside an annual assessment by the agency that found it is not deploying high-speed broadband fast enough.

Using new address-level deployment data, the FCC’s annual assessment found that as of December 2022, 24 million Americans lack fixed broadband service, including 28% of those in rural areas and more than 23% living on Tribal lands.

“Our goal is to connect everyone, everywhere to high-speed broadband. But the last fully vetted and validated annual data before this agency show conclusively that we are not there yet,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. She added that the agency is “working on it,” especially as it helps to distribute $42 billion in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program funding to the states to build out the nation’s broadband network.

These findings are under the old speed definition, which was 25 megabits per second for download speeds, and 3 megabits per second for upload speeds. The new benchmark for broadband is 100/20 Mbps, which is in keeping with the bipartisan infrastructure law, which determined that “locations without access to networks that can deliver 25/3 Mbps service are ‘unserved’ and locations without access to 100/20 Mbps service are ‘underserved.’”

It is not just the FCC that has found that millions of Americans are still underserved. Recent research by BroadbandNow, a comparison and research site tracking high-speed internet service in the U.S., estimated that 22 million Americans lack broadband access under the old definition.

That marks a major improvement from the last time BroadbandNow analyzed FCC data in November 2023, when it found that 42 million Americans lacked broadband access. An FCC spokesperson declined to comment on BroadbandNow’s findings.

But while BroadbandNow’s editor-in-chief Tyler Cooper said in an interview it represents “major progress in general,” he warned that continued discrepancies between deployment data and the on-the-ground reality of whether Americans can access broadband could impact how federal funds are distributed under BEAD. If an area is deemed by the map as being served when it is unserved or underserved, that would mean less federal funding to close the digital divide.

Raising the benchmark, however, underplays somewhat the progress made in connecting more Americans to the internet. Under the FCC’s new definition of broadband speeds, the agency found that 45 million Americans lack access to broadband internet at the new speed, a figure that Cooper said might be reflected in BroadbandNow’s research if they were to re-audit who can access broadband at that speed.

That is significant, as the COVID-19 pandemic led to Americans’ greater reliance on the internet and highlighted the need for faster speeds to cope with the demands of online school, work and health care. Many people during the pandemic lacked the speeds to keep up. Rosenworcel said in her statement that the pandemic “exposed our digital divide in living color.”

BroadbandNow’s research, which checked broadband availability at more than 110,000 addresses, found that every state in the continental U.S. overreported broadband access. With 1.8 million lacking access to a 25/3 Mbps connection, BroadbandNow found that Texas had the most Americans without broadband in total, a number close to the FCC’s own findings. Indeed, the BroadbandNow and FCC findings of unserved Americans state-by-state are much closer than in previous years.

That’s likely due to the agency’s adoption of address-level deployment data, as mandated by Congress. The FCC used the more granular data to create a new national map showing in greater detail than ever before what locations in the country have broadband service. Under its previous mapping system using its Form 477, the FCC deemed an entire Census block to be served if just one address within it could access broadband internet.

“I do think that the FCC deserves some credit here,” Cooper said. “They've recognized that improving the maps is a massive requirement, if we're going to dole out $42 billion to states based on the data. I think they've known that the 477 process needed to be replaced for a long time.”

The BEAD process is in a critical phase, as states can challenge the findings of the existing maps in a bid to refine which addresses are unserved or underserved and so get more federal funding. 

Cooper said giving power to the states and listening to them through this process is crucial, as they know their communities best. He said to expect “aggressive pushback” from states to correct federal discrepancies. “I do think that this state-centric process going forward, it's going to be key.”