Helping the FCC Drive Digital Access

Despite broadband access being essential to modern American life, giving many people access to education, jobs, healthcare, and public services, many communities still face slow, unreliable, or nonexistent Internet service. This is due in part to Federal agencies relying on outdated and inaccurate broadband coverage maps to assess broadband service availability.

Internet service providers submit the data that comprises these maps to the FCC, but that data can be inconsistent, incomplete, and in many cases, inaccurate. Without standardized reporting requirements or meaningful ways for the public to challenge provider coverage claims, many service gaps go unrecognized. As a result, Federal broadband funding is misdirected, leaving underserved communities without much needed connectivity.

To address these issues and improve our nation’s broadband coverage maps, Congress enacted the Broadband DATA Act, requiring the FCC to collect more granular, standardized data from service providers and to verify the data’s accuracy through public challenge and verification processes. Implementing this mandate is complex, as the FCC must collect and analyze highly technical data, such as signal coverage models and detailed information about towers, antennas, and other network infrastructure from both mobile and fixed wireless providers. The FCC also manages the challenge, verification, and audit processes that rely on consumer and public data to ensure the accuracy, integrity, and transparency of the resulting national broadband maps. Without the right tools, expertise, and support, the FCC’s mission would be difficult to achieve.

To build more accurate broadband maps, the FCC collects detailed data from broadband Internet service providers twice a year. These providers must submit coverage maps and share other technical details about their coverage and modeling techniques. This information forms the foundation of the Broadband Data Collection (BDC) system, which the FCC uses to track broadband service availability.

The FCC then verifies the information’s accuracy. This includes comparing provider-submitted coverage maps with independent modeling results, on-the-ground Internet speed tests, and feedback from consumers and local governments. If there are discrepancies, the FCC works with the providers to resolve them and removes or updates inaccurate coverage claims on the official broadband maps. To do this effectively, the FCC requires technical expertise in wireless engineering, signal modeling, and data analysis.

eSimplicity provides this expertise and supports the FCC’s BDC efforts by reviewing provider-submitted coverage and supporting technical data. Our team also performs propagation studies using infrastructure data submitted by the provider under the audit or verification process and compares results to the claimed coverage. We also provide technical input and analytical support for the challenge and crowdsource process. Through this work, we ensure the FCC has reliable, high-quality data to guide Federal broadband investment and close the connectivity gap across the country.

The result of the FCC’s BDC work is evolving broadband maps that more accurately reflect real-world broadband availability across the country. With reliable data in hand, the FCC and other stakeholders can identify underserved communities and guide targeted investments to expand broadband access nationwide. In support of the FCC’s BDC mission, eSimplicity developed automation tools that significantly streamlined mobile and fixed wireless provider data reviews. These tools cut the time to process and evaluate bi-annual mobile service provider coverage submissions by 80 percent, enabling the efficient analysis of millions of small map sections and numerous supporting data files in each cycle. Similarly, we cut the time to process audit and verification data by around 70 percent, accelerating the FCC’s ability to identify and address data quality issues.

eSimplicity has played a hands-on role in helping the FCC improve the accuracy of broadband coverage data nationwide. We’ve conducted hundreds of propagation modeling studies to support verification and audit efforts, evaluated dozens of formal challenges to provider-submitted coverage claims, and analyzed thousands of crowdsourced data points from the public. These efforts have led to our discovery of hundreds of coverage anomalies, inconsistencies, and deficiencies across multiple wireless and mobile providers.

In addition to analysis, eSimplicity has produced hundreds of technical and status reports, in-depth studies, presentations, standard operating procedures, data specifications, and process improvement recommendations. We also played a key role in refining the FCC’s system for generating future broadband coverage predictions, which resulted in a more reliable, flexible, and scalable framework. These improvements enable more accurate modeling of real-world conditions, allowing the FCC to make meaningful comparisons between reported and expected coverage.

Overall, eSimplicity’s efforts are helping the FCC meet its BDC objectives of transparency in broadband reporting and enabling public participation through the challenge and verification processes, ultimately ensuring that Federal funding reaches and connects underserved areas. With eSimplicity’s support, the FCC has not only improved the accuracy of current broadband maps, it has built a sustainable, data-driven system to support equitable broadband access for the future.