Broadband Measurement Summit Program
Measuring broadband speeds, prices, availability, reliability and competition
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Broadband Measurement Summit Program
Thursday, March 7, 2024 | WASHINGTON D.C.
Keynote Address from Carmen Scurato, Legal Advisor for Consumer and Public Safety Issues for the FCC Chairwoman
Jericho Casper
PANEL 1: The Challenge Process for State Broadband Offices
Many state broadband offices are about to begin their broadband mapping challenges under the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment grant program. This is a process for states to verify locations that are unserved (i.e., they lack access to 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) * 3 Mbps broadband), and locations that are underserved (i.e., they lack access to 100 Mbps * 20 Mbps broadband). A few advanced states have already begun, or have already completed the process. What have they learned? What “challenges” are they facing? What’s next for broadband mapping?
Jericho Casper
Panelists:
- Sally Doty, Director, Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi
- Glen Howie, Director, Arkansas State Broadband Office
- Chandler Vaughan, Senior Broadband Policy Analyst, Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development
- Alex Wassiliew, Senior Commercial Executive: Government, Broadband & Wireless, Ookla
- Adeyinka Ogunlegan, Vice President, Government Affairs & Policy, EducationSuperHighway
- Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast
Jericho Casper
PANEL 2: The Value of Mapping Assets Beyond BEAD
Besides current broadband challenges, what geospatial, demographic, and operational information is important for BEAD implementation? In particular, what geospatial information do investors and operators of broadband networks need to better deploy broadband? This session will consider why mapping assets is valuable well beyond the BEAD program.
Panelists:
- Roddy Flynn, Executive Director, Delaware Broadband Office
- J. Randolph Luening, Founder, BroadbandToolkit.com
- Chris Scharrer, Founder, DCS Technology Design
- Mike Byrne, Senior Vice President, Information Systems, Conexon
- Christine Parker (moderator), Senior GIS Analyst, Institute for Local Self Reliance's Community Broadband Networks
Special Address: Crowdsourced Audit of FCC's Broadband Availability Claims
- John Busby, Managing Director, BroadbandNow
This study uses crowdsourced data to audit the FCC's broadband availability claims, revealing significant overstatements across technologies: Cable (14.1%), DSL (53.4%), Fiber (25.7%), and Fixed Wireless (58.4%). The discrepancies between FCC's reports and actual availability highlight the need for more accurate data collection and policy reevaluation. Our findings emphasize the value of crowdsourced data in assessing and advocating for realistic broadband service policies, urging a reexamination of current infrastructure and reporting practices.
PANEL 3: The FCC's Broadband Nutrition Labels
As if the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s BEAD program wasn’t enough, the Broadband Measurement Summit will consider the current status of the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband “nutrition” labels. By April 10, 2024, larger ISPs must display these new Broadband Consumer Labels at the point of sale. They must use clear, easy-to-understand, and accurate information about the cost and performance of broadband services. Internet service providers with 100,000 or fewer subscriber lines must do so by October 10, 2024. How is the FCC’s nutrition labels process going?
Jericho Casper
Panelists:
- Zac Champ, Deputy Chief, Consumer Policy Division, Federal Communications Commission
- Lorrie Faith Cranor, Director and Bosch Distinguished Professor of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
- Steve Morris, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association
- Lai Yi Ohlsen, Lead Data Scientist, Measurement Lab
- Ted Hearn (moderator), Editor, Policyband
PANEL 4: Measuring and Tracking Broadband Pricing
The Biden Administration’s “Internet for All” program emphasizes the important role of affordable broadband. That’s one reason that the Affordable Connectivity Program has loomed so large in discussions of America’s broadband buildout. What does the evidence show about the price of broadband in the United States versus other Western nations? How does it vary by location? As part of the more detailed and granular broadband mapping and data now being collected, is broadband pricing data being left out?
Jericho Casper
Panelists:
- Sascha Meinrath, Palmer Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State
University, co-founder of M-Lab, and director of X-Lab - Kristen Purcell, Senior Vice President, SSRS
- Scott Wallsten, Executive Director, Technology Policy Institute
- Tyler Cooper (moderator), Editor in Chief, BroadbandNow
Speaker Bios
Keynote Address from the Office of Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel
Carmen Scurato
Carmen Scurato serves as the Legal Advisor for consumer and public safety issues to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. She joined the Chairwoman’s office from Free Press where she worked on telecommunications, privacy, and technology issues. Previously, she led a policy team focused on advancing the communication needs of the Latinx community for the National Hispanic Media Coalition.
PANEL 1: The Challenge Process for State Broadband Offices
Sally Doty
Sally Burchfield Doty was named by Governor Tate Reeves as the first director of the Office of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi (BEAM). She is an attorney, and was Executive Director of the Mississippi Public Utilities Staff. Previously she served three terms in the Mississippi Senate representing Southwest Mississippi, serving as Vice Chair of Judiciary Division A and Vice-Chair of Public Property. She also worked on a wide range of other issues on a whole host of other committees.
Glen Howie
Glen Howie is the director of the Arkansas State Broadband Office, where he serves as the chief broadband advisor to Gov. Sanders. He is leading the state’s broadband infrastructure and digital opportunity planning and implementation, an effort expected to exceed $1.2 billion over the next several years.
Adeyinka Ogunlegan
Adeyinka Ogunlegan is the Vice President, Government Affairs & Policy at EducationSuperHighway, a national nonprofit with the mission to close the digital divide for the 17 million households that have access to the Internet but can’t afford to connect. As the leader of the government affairs team, Adeyinka focuses on developing the organization's policy positions and advocacy strategy while bringing together the right coalition of partners to accomplish EducationSuperHighway's mission to close the broadband affordability gap. Prior to joining Education SuperHighway, Adeyinka spent several years at Comcast where she was responsible for legislative advocacy and building partnerships with community-based organizations to close the digital divide.
Chandler Vaughan
Chandler Vaughan is Broadband Policy Analyst at Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. Chandler leads program and policy development for Virginia’s existing broadband deployment programs, as well as for the upcoming BEAD program.
Alex Wassiliew
Alex Wassiliew is a Director in Ookla's US Government practice area focused on supporting federal, state and local governments and ISPs in their quest to ensure broadband accessibility, and better connectivity for all. Along with the entire team at Ookla, Wassiliew is focused on ensuring governments, agencies and ISPs have comprehensive, accurate and independent data on network performance and availability so that no serviceable address is left behind as part of our unprecedented telecom funding opportunities. Prior to his role at Ookla, he spent time at RootMetrics, Verizon and Current Analysis.
Drew Clark
Breakfast Media LLC CEO Drew Clark has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing campaign for broadband data. As Editor and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media company advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.
PANEL 2: The Value of Mapping Assets Beyond BEAD
Mike Byrne
Mike Byrne is Senior Vice President of Information Systems at Conexon. He has has 30 years of geospatial design, analysis and implementation experience in the private and public sectors. Mike served as the first Geographic Information Officer for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where he led the creation of the first-ever National Broadband Map. Mike’s work helped form the foundation of the Connect America Fund (CAF) and enhanced the collective understanding of where investments were needed to fulfill a connected America vision. He was awarded a Service to America Medal, the highest award given to government employees, for his work.
Roddy Flynn
Roddy Flynn is executive director of Delaware Broadband Office. Prior to this role, he served as the Deputy Director of Congressional Affairs for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Appointed by the White House, Flynn led congressional affairs for the Internet for All initiative which is tasked with implementing the $48 billion high-speed Internet expansion portions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
J. Randolph Luening
J. Randolph Luening is the founder of BroadbandToolkit.com, a firm that provides analytical planning tools to the telecommunication industry to help state broadband offices, investors, grant applicants,engineering firms, and ISPs in BEAD / CPF and others in infrastructure and funding-related decisions. Mr. Luening has enjoyed a 35-year carrier in the fixed, mobile, and satellite telecommunications, doing business in the US, Europe, and Asia. His education includes a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering (Duke University), Masters of Engineering in Electrical Engineering (Cornell University), and an MBA in Marketing (Wharton School of Business).
Chris Scharrer
Chris Scharrer founded DCS Technology Design, within the professional services industry, to bring excellence in Telecommunication Infrastructure Design for all types of intelligent building and smart community applications. With COVID, and in response to the lack of reliable and trusted ISP service area maps, DCS refocused its mission to develop methodologies that produce highly accurate Rural Broadband accessibility data, and helping Michigan municipalities locate thousands of previously missed or mis-reported homes and businesses that do not have access to Broadband and qualifying them for needed grant funding, ensuring inclusive accessibility for all residents.
Christine Parker
Christine Parker is a Senior GIS Analyst with ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative. Christine spent 15 years working on projects to support efforts from non-profit entities focused on bird and habitat conservation. She is interested in creating and sharing maps and images that illustrate complex information in a way that is accessible and impactful. Christine earned her Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Special Address: Crowdsourced Audit of FCC's Broadband Availability Claims
John Busby
John Busby is Managing Director of BroadbandNow and Chief Marketing Officer for marketing services company Centerfield. More than 10 million Americans use BroadbandNow every year to find every internet service provider in their area. Our analytics arm, BroadbandNow Research, publishes independent research on coverage, pricing and digital equity issues facing America. Prior to joining Centerfield, John was Head of Analytics for Amazon's grocery division. Prior to Amazon, John was Senior Vice President of Analytics and Marketing at Marchex. He holds a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University.
PANEL 3: The FCC's Broadband Nutrition Labels
Zac Champ
Zac Champ currently serves as Deputy Division Chief at the Federal Communications Commission's Consumer Policy Division, specializing in Broadband Nutrition labels. Previously, he was Chief of Staff for the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at the FCC. With direct experience in the wireless industry, Zac also served as the Vice President of Government Affairs for the Wireless Infrastructure Association.
Lorrie Faith Cranor
Lorrie Faith Cranor is the Director and Bosch Distinguished Professor of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute and FORE Systems University Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She directs the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS) and co-directs the Privacy Engineering masters program at CMU. In 2016 she served as Chief Technologist at the US Federal Trade Commission.
Steve Morris
Steve Morris is Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of NCTA – The
Internet & Television Association (NCTA), where he represents the cable
industry on a wide range of matters related to the regulation of broadband
and voice services. Prior to joining NCTA, Mr. Morris worked in the Wireline Competition Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission, at a provider of fiber optic network facilities, and at two Washington, D.C., law firms.
Mr. Morris received a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from George Mason University
School of Law.
Lai Yi Ohlsen
Lai Yi Ohlsen is Lead Data Scientist, Measurement Lab, where she studies the evolution of the Internet, and a part-time lecturer at The New School where she teaches Critical Computation, Core Lab: Systems and Statistics & Society. The user-initiated measurements collected by M-Lab provide an opportunity to understand whether our shared infrastructure can handle the unprecedented shift of load to the network’s edges.
Ted Hearn
Ted Hearn is the Editor and Publisher of Policyband, a new website dedicated to comprehensive coverage of the broadband communications market.
PANEL 4: Measuring and Tracking Broadband Pricing
Sascha Meinrath
Sascha Meinrath is the Palmer Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State University, co-founder of M-Lab, and director of X-Lab, an innovative think tank focusing on the intersection of vanguard technologies and public policy. Professor Meinrath is a renowned technology policy expert, and internationally recognized for his work over the past quarter century as a community Internet pioneer, social entrepreneur, and cutting-edge broadband measurement research.
Kristen Purcell
Kristen Purcell holds the position of Senior Vice President at SSRS. Prior to this role, she served as Vice President, Chief Research and Analytics Officer at Consumer Reports. Before joining Consumer Reports, Kristen worked at Mathematica Policy Research, and was the Business Transformation Director. Kristen also had experience working at the Pew Research Center, where she served as the Associate Director, Research for the Internet & American Life Project.
Scott Wallsten
Scott Wallsten is President and Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute and also a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. He is an economist with expertise in industrial organization and public policy, and his research focuses on competition, regulation, telecommunications, the economics of digitization, and technology policy. He was the economics director for the FCC’s National Broadband Plan and has been a lecturer in Stanford University’s public policy program, director of communications policy studies and senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a senior fellow at the AEI – Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, an economist at The World Bank, a scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a staff economist at the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University.
Tyler Cooper
Tyler Cooper is the Editor-in-Chief at BroadbandNow. BroadbandNow and its analytics arm, BroadbandNow Research, cover social, economic and political issues related to broadband technology such as digital inclusion, municipal broadband, telecom legislation, emerging technologies, and the impact of broadband on everyday life. Tyler is an active speaker at industry conferences and events, such as the National Digital Inclusion Alliances Net Inclusion conference, NPR’s “In Conversation” & Broadband Breakfast’s “Broadband Breakfast Live Online.” Tyler’s work has been published on sites including VentureBeat, TechRadar, Digital Trends, The Next Web, as well as VICE, Fox News, Voice of America, and many other outlets.
Broadband Measurement Summit Sponsors
BroadbandNow is a data aggregation company helping millions of consumers find and compare local internet options. BroadbandNow’s database of providers, the largest in the U.S., delivers the highest-value guides consisting of comprehensive plans, prices and ratings for thousands of internet service providers. BroadbandNow relentlessly collects and analyzes internet providers’ coverage and availability to provide the most accurate zip code search for consumers.
BroadbandToolkit.com provides analytical planning tools to the telecommunication industry to help state broadband offices, investors, grant applicants, engineering firms, and ISPs understand and manage BEAD / CPF decision-making. The firm also helps clients navigate the newly released FCC Fabric. BroadbandToolkit.com consulting enables clients to integrate location grids, dozens of layers of critical geospatial data, commercial crowd-sourced measurements, and even mobile broadband data.
Ookla® is a global leader in network intelligence and connectivity insights. For almost two decades, Ookla has set the industry standard for both fixed and mobile network testing and analysis. From its world-renowned Speedtest® and Downdetector® platforms to an accompanying and growing suite of end-to-end enterprise solutions, Ookla’s mission is to make the internet better, faster, and more accessible for everyone. Ookla’s enterprise solutions combine first-party crowdsourced data and scientifically controlled testing with tools that provide actionable insights across a network’s lifecycle and customer experience. Our insights empower operators, businesses, government agencies, nonprofits, and more to analyze, optimize, and publicize networks around the world.
Founded in 2008 by Chris Scharrer, DCS Technology Design is focused on developing methodologies that produce highly accurate Broadband accessibility map data. We validate where existing served areas are reported correctly and find where unserved gap areas are still being overlooked. We have helped Michigan municipalities locate thousands of previously missed or mis-reported homes and businesses that do not have access to Broadband and qualifying them for needed grant funding. County by county, DCS continues to demonstrate the importance of trusted information that assures connectivity and inclusiveness for all residents.
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