Conference Agenda

US Congress mandated more accurate broadband mapping through the Broadband DATA Act of 2020. In 2022, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) launched the Broadband Data Collection (BDC) program, composed of the Fabric Challenge, Fixed Availability Challenge, and Mobile Availability Challenge. Each of these challenges inform how Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding is allocated to specific states regions to ensure that areas without a minimum level of broadband service are prioritized. Importantly, these challenge processes enable “consumers, Tribes, governments, providers, and [other citizens] to continually improve and refine the accuracy of the broadband availability data.”

While a number of studies have examined results from the Fabric Challenge and Fixed Availability Challenge, there has been a lack of attention on the Mobile Availability Challenge (MAC) results, despite growing trend of smartphone dependence among different demographic groups. Indeed, as of February 2026, there have only been 378 cognizable MAC challenges between September 2023 and April 2026. In this paper we use Ookla Mobile Performance data to reveal how current MAC data does not necessarily reflect places where coverage needs to be challenged. This highlights an important gap between attempted participation/non-participation and successful challenges that require new approaches.

To examine these approaches, we investigate the feasibility of leveraging federal fleet vehicles to opportunistically collect data as part of the MAC process. We show that this approach could increase measurement of locations that are currently reported as having full mobile broadband coverage by 91.7%. We also show that this approach captures 48% of rural MAC hexagons and 42.1% of Ookla's slow tiles (< 35 Mbps) in rural areas, indicating that it is likely to cover existing areas of interest. At the end of this paper, we discuss how broadband regulators and advocates can support greater participation in the MAC.