WhereFiber research

Original analysis of the FCC's Broadband Data Collection, computed from the raw filing rather than summarised from someone else's summary. Every study states its method, both directions of bias, and what it cannot tell you. All of it is free to reproduce with attribution.

Studies

Why these two disagree with each other, on purpose

The competition study reports a floor: providers overstate coverage, so every overstatement moves a home into the at-most-one-company group and none out of it. The gigabit study reports a ceiling: the same overstatement inflates how many homes look like they can get fast service. The biases run in opposite directions and both are stated on the page rather than buried.

They also count different things. One counts residential locations, meaning buildings. The other counts residential units, meaning homes inside them. An apartment block is one location and many units, so the two national totals differ by tens of millions and neither is wrong.

Using this work

Everything here is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Reproduce the tables in a news story, a state broadband plan or a paper, with credit and a link. Each study carries a ready-made citation line.

If you need a cut we have not published, by county, by metro, by operator or for a single state, write to contact@wherefiber.com. We hold the whole filing and running an extra cut is usually quick.

Data source: the FCC's Broadband Data Collection, filing period D25, published July 21, 2026.