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| U.S. State Broadband Data Implies 4-5% Can't Get 3 Meg, 2% Not Even 1.5 |
| Thursday, 17 February 2011 17:46 |
 From the Broadband Map, some state data [added 2/18] that calculates to 4% of the U.S. not able to get 3-6 meg advertised. From another NTIA chart http://bit.ly/eEaLRp, I see that about half of those can get 1.5 meg and that by the NTIA data about 98% of the U.S. can get 1.5 meg. There are anomalies in the data that need explaining before any of this is used for policy about the unserved. I put this together trying to understand the data and there are some surprise. In particular, in 2007, California did a fairly careful study and found 96% broadband coverage. The NTIA map shows 91.7% in 2010. While some of that may be that the federal map has a 3 megabit cutoff, there are very few broadband providers that offer less than 3 megabits. Cable is listed as not serving 18% but that figure is almost certainly too high. If it were accurate, some major cable operators submitted fraudulent SEC reports. I'm researching more.
Indiana, with 6M people, seems the worst served of the larger states at a measured 72%. Wisconsin at 88% and Virginia at 93% are the other two large state with issues. Puerto Rico at 46.5% is below much of Latin America and other countries far poorer than the island.
Below, the states and territories from broadbandmap.gov, both total coverage and cable modem only. It's clear from the low percentages they believe have cable coverage in many states that the figures are simply in error.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 25 February 2011 14:53 |