The New York State Public Service Commission has released a first-of-its-kind, interactive broadband map to provide the most detailed depiction of broadband infrastructure in New York to date.
The map, along with an accompanying report, is the result of months of field assessments conducted by the Commission in the state’s most remote areas, covering more than 80,000 miles.
In order to collect accurate data, the Commission collaborated with 60 internet service providers and surveyed tens of thousands of New York consumers.
Prior to the map’s creation, New York, like most states, relied in part on federal data that only required broadband providers to deliver service to one address in a census block to designate the entire area as served. By collecting address-level data, New York is now able to depict what locations are served, underserved, and unserved in a more granular way, which will aid in allocating state and federal funding.
The interactive map allows users to explore the state’s broadband availability. Users are able to search an address to see what providers are available, what technology those providers are using and what speeds and pricing packages they offer. Users are also able to search at county, municipal, and school district levels to obtain data on percentages of served, underserved, or unserved populations at each level.
The new map will allow individual New Yorkers and policymakers to analyze a more accurate representation of which locations are served, underserved or unserved. The Commission found that 97.4 percent of New York State address locations are served by high-speed broadband service providers. The map demonstrates that high-speed broadband services remain unavailable to many New Yorkers in predominately rural areas. Furthermore, it shows that counties with the lowest median income were found to have the highest average prices for broadband and the lowest percentage of served locations.
The link to the interactive map can be found here: https://mapmybroadband.dps.ny.gov/
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