FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC)

What It Means

The FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) is an address-level broadband availability database maintained by the Federal Communications Commission, launched in 2022 and mandated by the Broadband DATA Act of 2020 (Public Law 116-130). The BDC replaced the legacy Form 477 system, which had been widely criticized for overstating coverage, Form 477 required ISPs to report only at the census block level (a geographic unit that can contain thousands of addresses), and a provider could claim an entire census block was served if even a single address could theoretically be connected. The BDC fixes this by requiring granular address-level reporting: every ISP must file twice a year (as of June 30 and December 31) a list of the exact addresses it can serve along with the maximum download and upload speeds available at each. The database covers more than 116 million U.S. locations (homes, businesses, and other structures), and the FCC maps are public at broadbandmap.fcc.gov. Consumers can challenge inaccurate availability claims through the BDC website, and a significant minority of challenges are sustained, correcting the map and potentially qualifying previously excluded locations for BEAD and other federal programs. The BDC is the authoritative dataset used to allocate BEAD funding, $42.45 billion distributed across states based on their unserved and underserved location counts from the BDC. The Broadband Grade uses BDC availability data as its primary input for provider competition (30% of grade), fiber availability (20% of grade), and maximum download speed at a ZIP code level.

Frequently Asked Questions