Our Data Sources
We tag every fact by source tier and date. Here's how we rank reliability and where our data comes from.
Last updated .
How we rank source reliability
Tiers rank a source’s independence, not absolute truth. For a specific provider, that provider’s own data may be the most precise — but it’s still labeled and caveated, and never treated as independent.
| Tier | Examples | Typical reliability |
|---|---|---|
| Official (government) | FCC, NTIA, U.S. Census Bureau, state broadband offices | High — verify freshness and precision |
| Provider-owned | A provider’s own coverage map or availability checker | Authoritative for that provider, but often optimistic — labeled |
| Third-party | Independent datasets (e.g. testing firms) | Varies with methodology and license |
| Affiliate / commercial | Availability or product data from a commercial feed | Commercial, not independent — labeled as such |
| Crowdsourced | User-reported data | Useful signal, high noise — low confidence |
| Editorial / manual | Our own verification and curation | Reliable when recent and documented |
Key sources we use (and their status)
FCC National Broadband Map (Broadband Data Collection)
Fixed and mobile availability baseline (area-level summaries, with caveats).
Status: License verification in progress
U.S. Census Bureau — TIGER/Line & geographies
State/county/place/tract boundaries and FIPS/GEOID identifiers.
Status: Public domain (U.S. government work)
NTIA BroadbandUSA / BEAD program
Program and funding context for explainers — not address-level availability.
Status: Government works — usable for context
Carrier coverage maps (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile)
We link out and cite; we do not reproduce their maps. Coverage is modeled.
Status: Link/cite only — not redistributed
MVNO disclosures (manually verified)
Which carrier network each MVNO resells (host-network mappings), dated.
Status: Editorial verification — re-checked periodically
Conflict resolution & freshness
When sources disagree for the same place and service, we prefer the higher tier, then the fresher data, then the finer geography — and keep the provenance rather than silently discarding it. Each record stores an “as-of” date; a scheduled freshness check flags data that has aged past its per-source threshold so we can downgrade confidence or re-ingest it.
Questions about a specific source or figure? Contact us — we’ll show our work.