New FCC Broadband Map, version 3

A few days ago the FCC released a new version of the National Broadband Map with data as of June 2023. As the FCC says in the blog releasing it, the story is a dramatic decrease in the number of Unserved and Underserved locations. We now have 7.1 million unserved locations and 3.0 million underserved location. The total of 10.1 million locations is a decrease of 16% from the 11.9 million locations that were unserved and underserved six months earlier.

Here’s the spreadsheet.

Some of the biggest movers were North Dakota, New York, and Nebraska, which lowered their unserved numbers by 39%, 30% and 30% respectively. In North Dakota, there are only 4,915 remaining unserved locations. In New York, the unserved locations went from 149,000 to 105,000.

As the Chairwoman said in the blog post, I’m sure we’re seeing some of the RDOF projects start to light up. But I also suspect we’re going to find ISPs cleaning up their coverage filings, making sure that everything they can serve is filed on the map. After all, soon one of these map versions is going to fund competitors for remaining unserved and underserved locations.