Deere Seeks Ag-Oriented Mobile Broadband Data, Maps; Others Cite Mapping Issues

Deere & Co. urged improving mobile broadband data collection and mapping to identify coverage gaps affecting agriculture. In meetings with aides to every FCC commissioner, company representatives discussed developing "potential mapping tools ... using Commission cell tower data" combined with public Agriculture Department crop information, plus cited state examples of using such tools. "Commission rules and support programs should recognize and address the growing unmet need for mobile broadband coverage ... in areas of agricultural operations," said a filing posted Monday docket 11-10. It also cited GPS' key role in "high precision agriculture and the benefits ... made possible through continuing access to Galileo satellites." USTelecom and telco members "stressed the importance of granular data to make federal funding programs, including CAF 3, as targeted as possible." The group's mapping proposal also would allow "auction participants to bid with the full knowledge of exactly how many locations in a census block require service and, importantly, exactly where those locations are," said a filing Friday on meetings with Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force and Office of Economic and Analytics. "Future funding programs should target all unserved locations, not just those previously defined as 'high cost,' because the market has failed to provide service regardless of predictions about their economic viability." The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is "deeply concerned with potentially significant overstatement of fixed broadband deployment" due to current Form 477 guidelines, said a filing on a meeting Wireline Bureau staffers. "The issue of reporting of served locations within census blocks, particularly rural census blocks, is conflated unnecessarily with the challenges of identifying locations in rural census blocks. The two considerations are distinct and can and should be addressed separately."