fcc broadband map

An Internet service provider that admitted lying to the Federal Communications Commission about where it offers broadband will pay a $10,000 fine and implement a compliance plan to prevent future violations.

Jefferson County Cable (JCC), a small ISP in Toronto, Ohio, admitted that it falsely claimed to offer fiber service in an area that it hadn’t expanded to yet. A company executive also admitted that the firm submitted false coverage data to prevent other ISPs from obtaining government grants to serve the area. Ars helped expose the incident in a February 2023 article.

The FCC announced the outcome of its investigation on March 15, saying that Jefferson County Cable violated the Broadband Data Collection program requirements and the Broadband DATA Act, a US law, “in connection with reporting inaccurate information or data with respect to the Company’s ability to provide broadband Internet access service.”

“To settle this matter, Jefferson County Cable agrees to pay a $10,000 civil penalty to the United States Treasury,” the FCC said. “Jefferson County Cable also agrees to implement enhanced compliance measures. This action will help further the Commission’s efforts to bridge the digital divide by having accurate data of locations where broadband service is available.”

We also published reports in February 2023 detailing false broadband claims made by Comcast, which initially insisted that the false data it submitted to the FCC was correct. It’s not clear yet whether Comcast will face any punishment.

Inaccurate claims for 1,500 addresses

Last week’s FCC order said that Jefferson County Cable initially reported serving 8,178 addresses for the commission’s June 30, 2022, data collection. It then reduced that number to 6,605 addresses in the FCC’s next round of data collection for December 31, 2022.

Even the second, lower number was higher than Jefferson County Cable’s actual coverage. After a letter from the FCC Enforcement Bureau in March 2023, “Jefferson County Cable corrected its inaccurate submissions for both data filings by removing these approximately 1,500 locations from each of the relevant data filings on May 19, 2023,” the FCC order said.

“At that time, the Company could not provide broadband service at or connect those locations within 10 business days of a request for service, as required by the Broadband Data Collection Rules,” the FCC said. “Jefferson County Cable acknowledged to the Bureau that it had not taken the necessary time and effort to review and understand the Commission’s guidance on Broadband Data Collection filings before it made these two filings.”

Jefferson County Cable’s false claim came to light thanks to Ryan Grewell, who runs a small wireless Internet service provider called Smart Way Communications. He heard about the false claims from his own customers and used the FCC’s map system to file challenges at specific addresses.

Damning email

One of Grewell’s challenges at an address in Bergholz, Ohio, led to the cable company admitting its false claims. Last week’s FCC order said this address was one of the 1,500 incorrectly claimed locations.

As we reported, Grewell got a response from a Jefferson County Cable executive who mistakenly thought Grewell was a potential customer instead of a competitor. The email said that Jefferson County Cable didn’t serve the area yet, but wanted to prevent potential competitors from getting deployment grants.

“You challenged that we do not have service at your residence and indeed we don’t today,” said the January 2023 email from Jefferson County Cable executive Bob Loveridge. “With our huge investment in upgrading our service to provide xgpon we reported to the BDC [Broadband Data Collection] that we have service at your residence so that they would not allocate addition [sic] broadband expansion money over [the] top of our private investment in our plant.”

Internet service providers are still providing false coverage information to the Federal Communications Commission, and the FCC process for challenging errors isn’t good enough to handle all the false claims, the agency was told by several groups this week.

The latest complaints focus on fixed wireless providers that offer home Internet service via signals sent to antennas. ISPs that compete against these wireless providers say that exaggerated coverage data prevents them from obtaining government funding designed to subsidize the building of networks in areas with limited coverage.

The wireless company LTD Broadband (which has been renamed GigFire) came under particular scrutiny in an FCC filing submitted by the Accurate Broadband Data Alliance, a group of about 50 ISPs in the Midwest.

“A number of carriers, including LTD Broadband/GigFire LLC and others, continue to overreport Internet service availability, particularly in relation to fixed wireless network capabilities and reach,” the group said. “These errors and irregularities in the Map will hinder and, in many cases, prevent deployment of essential broadband services by redirecting funds away from areas truly lacking sufficient broadband.”

ISPs are required to submit coverage data for the FCC’s broadband map, and there is a challenge process in which false claims can be contested. The FCC recently sought comment on how well the challenge process is working.

CEO blasts “100-year-old telcos”

The Accurate Broadband Data Alliance accused GigFire of behaving badly in the challenge process, saying “LTD Broadband/GigFire LLC often continues to assert unrealistic broadband claims without evidence and even accuses the challenger of falsifying information during the challenge process.”

GigFire CEO Corey Hauer disputed the Accurate Broadband Data Alliance’s accusations. Hauer told Ars today that “GigFire evaluated over 5 million locations and established that 339,598 are eligible to get service and that is accurately reflected in our BDC [Broadband Data Collection] filings.”

Hauer said GigFire offers service in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. The company’s service area is mostly wireless but includes about 20,000 homes passed by fiber lines, he said.

“GigFire wants to service as many customers as we can, but we have no interest in falsely telling customers that they qualify for service,” Hauer told us.

Hauer also said that “GigFire uses widely accepted wireless propagation models to compute our coverage. It’s just math, there is no way to game the system.” He said that telcos “feel they should get an additional wheelbarrow full of ratepayer money, and because of our coverage, they will not.”

“Many of these 100-year-old telcos were so used to being monopolies, that it appears they struggle with consumers that live in their legacy telco boundaries having competitive choices,” Hauer said.

Wireless claims hard to verify, groups say

Wireline providers have also exaggerated coverage, as we’ve reported. Comcast admitted to mistakes last year after previously insisting that false data it gave the FCC was correct. In another case, a small Ohio ISP called Jefferson County Cable admitted lying to the FCC about the size of its network in order to block funding to rivals.

But it can be especially hard to verify the claims made by fixed wireless providers, several groups that represented wireline providers told the FCC. The FCC says that fixed wireless providers can submit either lists of locations, or polygon coverage maps based on propagation modeling. GigFire submitted a list of locations.

Both the list and polygon models drew criticism from telco groups. The Minnesota Telecom Alliance told the FCC this week that “the highly generalized nature of the polygon coverage maps has tempted some competitive fixed wireless providers to exaggerate the extent of their service areas and the speeds of their services.”

The Minnesota group said that “polygon coverage maps are able to show only an alleged unsubsidized fixed wireless competitor’s theoretical potential signal coverage over a general area,” and don’t account for problems like “line-of-sight obstructions, terrain, foliage, weather conditions, and busy hour congestion” that can restrict coverage at specific locations.

“MTA members are aware that many fixed wireless broadband service providers are unable to determine whether they actually can serve a specific location and what level of service they can provide to that location unless and until they send a technician to the site to attempt to install service,” the group said.

The Minnesota telco group complained that inaccurate filings reduce the number of locations at which a telco can receive Universal Service Fund (USF) money. It is often virtually impossible to successfully “challenge the accuracy of fixed wireless service availability claims that can adversely impact USF support,” the group said.