Industry Wants More Changes to FCC’s Broadband Data Collection
A rift persists over how providers should get coverage areas restored to the FCC’s broadband map
WASHINGTON, August 26, 2026 – Telecom trade groups agree on plenty in a new round of filings at the Federal Communications Commission over how the agency should reduce burdens in its broadband mapping program.
But they’re sharply divided on a more consequential question: Once a carrier’s coverage claim gets knocked off the National Broadband Map, how hard should it have to work to get it back on?
The dispute is playing out in reply comments filed Monday regarding the FCC’s rulemaking released in May streamlining the Broadband Data Collection, the biannual process that feeds the government’s broadband map used to steer billions in federal broadband subsidies.
The sharpest disagreement centers on what evidence providers should need to restore a location to the map after it’s been removed through a challenge, audit or verification request. Groups representing large wireless carriers and cable providers want the FCC to make restoration easier.
Proposals from CTIA, USTelecom and NCTA include: Allowing a provider’s existing sworn biannual certification, already filed under penalty of perjury, to serve as evidence of current service; accepting simpler evidence such as screenshots of a provider’s website showing that service is currently for sale; and creating a time-based rule that would restore coverage automatically after a location has been reported consistently for a set number of reporting cycles – CTIA suggested four.
Rural carriers say that would gut the system
The Rural Wireless Association, representing small carriers that mostly serve remote areas, wants the opposite. The group argued restoration evidence should match the rigor that got a location pulled from the map in the first place – including objective data, such as speed tests, drive tests or radio frequency engineering analyses.
RWA says its members can spend months and hundreds of thousands of dollars gathering evidence to prove a competitor is overstating its coverage. If that competitor can simply get the coverage restored later through a certification or by waiting out the clock, RWA says, the entire challenge process becomes pointless.
Such permissive restoration standards “would undermine the accuracy of the National Broadband Map and render the challenge process futile for the rural wireless carriers and consumers who have invested significant resources into correcting inaccurate coverage claims,” RWA’s outside general counsel Carri Bennet wrote in the group’s reply comments.
The Competitive Carriers Association, which represents both regional and rural carriers, agreed restoration shouldn’t hinge on time alone, warning this could discourage carriers from bringing challenges at all.
“CCA believes that such types of restoration would constitute an extremely inequitable asymmetry in the relative burdens of proof between a successful challenge and its restoration,” CCA’s general counsel and senior vice president of legal and regulatory affairs Angela Simpson wrote in comments to the FCC.
WISPA, which represents fixed wireless internet providers, had floated a narrower idea: when a provider is only trying to restore a small slice of its locations in a given state, under 2 percent, the FCC should let it use a lighter evidentiary standard, or skip the detailed proof requirement altogether.
RWA rejected the proposed two-percent “de minimis” threshold, which it said would favor large carriers whose footprints dwarf smaller providers.
Broad agreement: Drop the sub-25 * 3 Mbps reporting
Nearly every industry commenter backed eliminating the requirement that fixed providers keep reporting broadband availability at speeds below 25 Megabit per second (Mbps) download * 3 Mbps upload.
WIA, CTIA, CCA, WISPA and USTelecom all argued the data has lost its policy value, since federal programs, including BEAD, have moved past that speed tier as a baseline for support eligibility. CTIA cited T-Mobile figures showing fewer than four percent of households still subscribe to sub-25 * 3 Mbps service, a number carriers say continues to shrink.
The groups also converged on eliminating 3G mobile broadband and mobile voice availability reporting, generally favoring a shift to “as-needed” special collections rather than routine biannual filings. Some, including CCA, urged specific carve-outs tied to the Alaska Connect Fund, or other funding opportunities that might arise where 3G data could be useful for eligibility determinations.
Providers also want the FCC to stop making them ask for confidentiality every time they file sensitive data.
Right now, if a company wants certain information kept out of public view, like how many subscribers it has in an area, where its cell towers sit, or the technical details behind its coverage estimates, it has to file a separate request each time, for every filing.
CTIA, NCTA, T-Mobile and ACA Connects all want the FCC to just designate those categories as confidential automatically, so companies don’t have to keep re-asking and FCC staff don’t have to keep reviewing near-identical requests twice a year.
Industry pushes for simplified mobile challenge process
CCA, CTIA and WIA all called for expanding the types of evidence usable in the mobile challenge process, particularly commercial speed-test data from firms like Ookla.
CCA pointed to Ookla’s own comments describing current submission rules as so restrictive they’ve suppressed participation rather than expanded it, especially in rural areas where crowdsourced data is thin.
Commercial speedtest platforms, the groups argue, already collect large quantities of real-world performance data that could supplement providers’ information.
WIA separately flagged Ookla’s warning that state privacy laws, including a new Colorado statute and Maryland’s Online Data Privacy Act, could limit the flow of granular, location-specific data that third parties supply to support the map. The wireless industry association urged the FCC to consider guidance, safe harbors or targeted federal preemption if state rules interfere with the Broadband DATA Act’s goals.
CTIA also backed a T-Mobile proposal to close a gap in which some providers using Citizens Broadband Radio Service and Educational Broadband Service spectrum aren’t submitting BDC data at all. CTIA asked the FCC to fix the system so all wireless broadband providers, regardless of spectrum band, report consistently.
