First and foremost, the FCC, Congress, local government, community groups, and existing service providers need to work together to create accurate broadband maps. Without an understanding of where broadband infrastructure actually exists, we won’t know which communities lack access to the Internet and which are served.
Risks and Rewards of the U.S. Broadband Funding Boom | Internet Society
While on the surface, this appears to be a rational starting point, in reality it's retrogressive and not a step forward. "Broadband mapping" originates from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that gave the U.S. Federal Commission authority to define advanced telecommunications based on throughput. The FCC determines what constitutes "broadband" level throughput. Providers are required to report annually to the FCC where they are selling it. Efforts to map this data have resulted in decades of unproductive gaming and wasteful controversy among regulators, policymakers, service providers and public interest advocates over the accuracy and utility of the reports.
The Biden administration's proposed American Jobs Plan properly regards advanced telecommunications as critical infrastructure rather than "broadband" as a service. It defines a level of throughput that makes it a de facto fiber to the home infrastructure standard. It would also create a public option by prioritizing networks owned by public sector and nonprofit entities such as consumer cooperatives.
Instead of mapping "broadband speed," what policymakers should do first is identify existing public sector and nonprofit entities that currently operate fiber networks. The American Jobs Plan and other potential sources of federal funding should be directed to them to expand and strengthen their networks. Where these networks are absent, funding should be allocated to enable regional public sector and nonprofit operators to design and build open access fiber as a much needed public option to remedy widespread gaps in access and affordability.
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