FCC Launches Urban Broadband/Phone Rate Survey

The FCC's new Office of Economics and Analytics and Wireline Competition Bureau have teamed up to launch the commission's 2020 urban rate survey. 

The FCC annually polls a random sample of fixed broadband and telephone providers in urban areas to insure that the carriers and operators receiving Universal Service Fund subsidies to provide those services to rural and hard /or expensive-to-reach areas do so at rates reasonably comparable to those in urban areas. 

The FCC used the 2018 form 477 broadband deployment/availability data to identify the broadband and phone operators serving urban census tracts who are being polled. 

Notices were being sent out to those companies Thursday (July 25), which will need to fill out an online form by Aug. 26. 

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.