The Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric (Fabric) is a dataset of all locations in the United States and its Territories where fixed broadband internet access service is or could be installed. The Fabric allows broadband availability data filers, the FCC, and other stakeholders to work from a single, standardized list of locations for the Broadband Data Collection (BDC). The FCC has contracted with CostQuest Associates to create the Fabric.
Learn more about what is and is not a Broadband Serviceable Location (BSL): About the Fabric: What a Broadband Serviceable Location (BSL) Is and Is Not
The Fabric is available to broadband service providers, governmental entities, and other entities, through a licensing agreement. For more information on accessing the Fabric, see:
- How Broadband Service Providers Can Access the Fabric
- How Governmental Entities Can Access the Fabric
- How Other Entities Can Access the Fabric
Filers of fixed broadband availability data in BDC should use the current Fabric as the basis for developing their availability data. Filers who choose to submit a list of locations (rather than a polygon coverage area) must match their data on the locations they serve to the Location IDs in the Fabric.
Governmental entities, service providers, and other third parties may submit bulk challenges to the Fabric to help identify missing and incorrect locations. For more information about the Bulk Fabric Challenge process or which version of the fabric to use, please see:
What’s in the Fabric?
- The Fabric is provided to licensees for download from CostQuest as a ZIP archive consisting of multiple files in a Comma Separated Values (CSV) format. Each file contains location records for an entire county. To the extent that your service area differs from the county boundary, you may have excess records. This is intentional.
- One of the files in the zip archive is a secondary address file. Note that newer versions of the Fabric generally include additional secondary addresses, which may improve users’ ability to match addresses to the Fabric.
- For information about what is contained in each file, see these data dictionaries.
Data Sources for the Fabric
The data sources used to identify the locations in the Fabric include a mix of aerial and satellite imagery, address databases, land and local tax records, and other sources the vendor identifies as helpful for determining, as completely as possible, the locations of structures throughout the United States where fixed broadband service is or can be installed.
For information about how the Fabric was generated, see the methods manuals.