Sources describe how ISPs like AT&T and Cox push the FCC to omit unflattering data, among other tactics, to improve scores on FCC's internet speeds report
Context & Ripple Effects
The tactics described here are not new, only newly sourced. In 2017 the cable lobby petitioned the FCC for a declaratory ruling on acceptable ad wording specifically to blunt state probes into slow broadband speeds, and by 2018 critics were flagging that the National Broadband Map overstated available ISPs and listed inaccurate speed data. The WSJ now reports the mechanism behind those distortions: AT&T and Cox directly pressed the FCC to omit unflattering numbers from its own speeds report.
What makes this consequential is where the same self-reported data flows next. The FCC proceeded with a $16B rural broadband plan despite lacking granular coverage data, later opened an investigation into whether ISPs exaggerated coverage for subsidy allocation, and by 2024 AT&T, Charter, Comcast, and Verizon were quietly lobbying to weaken the $42.5B broadband program. The speeds report is one node in a measurement pipeline the industry has repeatedly shaped.
First-order effects
- AT&T's and Cox's published scores on the FCC speeds report reflect data the companies successfully argued should be omitted, meaning the report understates performance gaps at exactly the named carriers.
- ISPs that did not negotiate comparable omissions are scored against a baseline tilted toward the carriers most engaged with the agency.
Second-order effects
- Subsidy targeting inherits the distortion: the same ISP-supplied data fed the $16B rural broadband plan, so money aimed at underserved areas is allocated against maps and reports the providers themselves influenced.
- Lobbying becomes a cheaper lever than network investment — the 2017 ad-wording ruling, this report manipulation, and the 2024 push against bill rules form a playbook other carriers have every incentive to copy.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, federal broadband measurement stays structurally dependent on self-reported carrier data, with each successive program — the map, the $16B plan, the $42.5B buildout — allocating billions against numbers the regulated parties helped write.
- State-level probes, which the cable lobby moved to shut down in 2017, remain the only enforcement layer outside the FCC's captured dataset, pointing toward fragmented state-versus-federal oversight of broadband claims.
The trend: US broadband policy is converging on a model where carriers shape the very metrics — speed scores, coverage maps, subsidy rules — used to grade them and route public money.