Block Group Level FCC Form 477 Fixed Broadband Deployment Summary

This layer is a composite of five sublayers with adjacent scale ranges showing the broadband score across the U.S. and outlying areas, at five different geographies – State, County, Tract, Block Group and Block. The broadband score is an index based on the FCC’s minimum standard of broadband of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload. A geography with speeds of 25/3 Mbps is awarded 100 points. Each type of geometry contains housing, population, and internet usage data taken from the following sources: * US Census Bureau 2010 Census data (2010) * USDA Non-Rural Areas (2013) * FCC Form 477 Fixed Broadband Deployment Data (January - June 2020) * FCC Population, Housing Unit, and Household Estimates (2019). Note that these are derived from Census and other data. * BroadbandNow Average Minimum Terrestrial Broadband Plan Prices (2020) * Measurement Lab (Jan - Jun 2020) Broadband offering data from each provider for Census Blocks are in a related table Field Names / Record Structure This layer includes over 150 attributes relating to reported speed and service information. In addition: * Each block includes housing unit, household, and population [estimates] from the FCC. * Each block has an attribute named WaterOnly that indicates if it is entirely water (yes/no). * Each block has two attributes indicating whether it is urban or rural (CensusUrbanRural and USDAUrbanRural). For units larger than blocks, block count (urban/rural) was used to determine this. Some tracts and block groups have an equal number of urban and rural blocks—so a new coded value was introduced: S (split). All blocks are either U or R, while tracts and block groups can be U, R, or S. * Each block has three attributes indicating whether it is part of a Tribal Block Group, is part of an American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian Area (AIANNHA) and the AIANNHA name. * US Census and USDA Rurality valuesAmalgamated broadband speed measurement categories based on Form 477. These include: * * 99: All Terrestrial Broadband Plus Satellite * 98: All Terrestrial Broadband * 97: Cable Modem * 96: DSL * 95: All Other (Electric Power Line, Other Copper Wireline, Other) The [FCC Speed Values] method is applied to all speeds from all data sources within this service. This includes: * Geography: State, County, Tract, Block Group, Block, <o:p></o:p> * Data source: FCC and M-Lab Within this method, speed values are shown as such: * <1 Mbps, reported up to three decimal points * >= 1 and < 2 Mbps, rounded to the nearest tenth * >= 2 and < 10 Mbps, truncated to the lower integer * >= 10 and < 1000 Mbps, rounded to the nearest integer * >= 1000 Mbps, the published bandwidth = 1000 Mbps Each sublayer has a varying number of attributes from these sources, depending on what data is available for the level of granularity. The following table displays what information is included with which geometry types: ───────────┬───────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────── Geometry │FCC Form 477 Fixed (Jan - Jun 2020)│FCC Demographic Estimates (2019)│M-Lab (Jan - Jun 2020)│BroadbandNow Avg. Min. Terrestrial Broadband Plan Prices│Urban/rural flags (Census and USDA) ───────────┼───────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────── State │Yes │Yes │Yes │Yes │No ───────────┼───────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────── County │Yes │Yes │Yes │Yes │No ───────────┼───────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────── Tract │Yes │Yes │No │Yes │Yes (U, R, S) ───────────┼───────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────── Block Group│Yes │Yes │No │Yes │Yes (U, R, S) ───────────┼───────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────── Block │Yes │Yes │No │Yes │Yes (U, R) ───────────┴───────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────── Additional Resources * [FCC Staff Block Estimates] * [Fixed Broadband Deployment Data from FCC Form 477] * [Digital Divide: Broadband Pricing by State, ZIP Code, and Income Level] (BroadbandUSA) * [Open Internet Measurement] (M-Lab) * [Eligibility Area Map Datasets] (USDA)