Don’t Expect a ‘Perfect Map’ for Broadband

With billions of dollars of federal funding for broadband expansion on the line, the accuracy of coverage maps published by the Federal Communication Commission and other organizations has been a hot topic of discussion in recent weeks. 

But seeking perfection in mapping broadband access may be futile, according to panelists in an online event hosted Tuesday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, an industry think tank.

“Getting to a perfect map is like me getting to a perfect day, it’s just not going to happen,” Nicol Turner Lee, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said during the event.

The broadband ecosystem isn’t static, and looking at one dataset is never going to tell the whole story, said Jessica Dine, an ITIF research assistant who moderated the event.