16.4M Housing Units Lack 100/20 Mbps Fixed Broadband, Blogs AT&T EVP

An estimated 9.8 million housing units lack fixed broadband at the 25/3 Mbps speed threshold in served and unserved areas, blogged Joan Marsh, AT&T executive vice president-federal regulatory. The number grows to 16.4 million at the 100/20 Mbps speed threshold, Marsh said. "The FCC has always assumed that directing funding to areas that are particularly costly to serve would drive investment deeper into lower-cost areas," Marsh said Thursday: "While that might have occurred in some areas, the fact that there are still many Americans without adequate broadband service suggests that the assumption was incorrect." Address-level broadband mapping is "critical" for targeted funding, she said, and the FCC's anticipated new map "should be the definitive resource for distribution of all broadband deployment dollars."