THE FCC announced today who started soliciting first-hand reports from people who are forced to rely on a low-quality internet. This new initiative is part of the FCC’s Broadband Data Collection program, and the agency hopes that, by collecting information directly from consumers, it will be better equipped to “increase the accuracy of its existing broadband maps”.
“Many Americans are left behind in access to jobs, education and health if they do not have access to broadband,” said FCC acting chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement announcing the initiative. “Collecting data from consumers who are directly affected by the lack of access to broadband will help inform the FCC’s mapping efforts and future decisions about where the service is needed.”
Anyone who wants to tell the FCC about how bad their internet is you can use this form to talk about any problems related to the Internet. ISP is strangling your internet? Write it down. Does the ISP not update its old DSL service? Write it down. There is no internet because you live in a rural area and is HughesNet too expensive? Write it all down.
The FCC says this new website will also become an information center for the broadband data collection program, a kind of one-stop shop for consumers and industry stakeholders to keep up with what’s going on in the home Internet world. And once the FCC has collected enough personal anecdotes, the agency will provide information about its new broadband data collection reporting systems yet to be established.
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On the one hand, this looks like an invigorating change of pace compared to the way the FCC did things under the previous administration. But at the same time, there is already loads of anecdotal evidence out there about how the country’s broadband coverage and speeds are lagging behind. The media, several organizations and data companies have already reported the situation and these reports would point the FCC in the right direction.
BroadbandNow, for example, has a detailed map showing each census block in the U.S. that does not have a terrestrial broadband provider. Fixing the reporting gap on Form 477 – which allowed ISPs to report that a block of the entire census was covered by their service, even if only one house in that census block actually subscribed to that service – was a start. But the FCC used this flawed data as a basis for ISPs to bid in its Digital Rural Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction last year, which led city broadband providers and power cooperatives to question whether the grant money went to the right companies. Not to mention the previous winners of the RDOF auction were unable to provide rural Internet in America in the time frame they said they would.
There is also a bit of irony in directing these who are “directly affected by the lack of broadband access” to an online form as the only way to tell the FCC how the lack of access to broadband affects their lives. Come on, FCC. You can do better than this stupid attempt to find out the real number of people in the USA who does not have reliable internet access and how it affects them.