FCC Admits It Sucks At Measuring Broadband Competition
from the yeah,-we-need-to-work-on-that dept
For years, plenty of folks (including the Government Accountability Office) have been pointing out that the way the FCC measures broadband competition is very flawed. It simply assumes that if a single household in a zip code is offered broadband by provider A, then every household in that zip code can get broadband from provider A. In an extreme version of this, say provider A offers broadband to a single household, and provider B offers broadband to a different household and everyone else has no broadband at all. Under the current FCC measurements, that's an area that has full broadband competition. See the problem? For some reason, the FCC hasn't done much about this measuring problem, but it appears that the Commission is finally recognizing it has a problem and saying it needs to change the way it measures things. Commissioner Michael Copps points out: "Our statistical methodology seems almost calculated to obscure just how far our country is falling behind many other industrialized nations in broadband availability, adoption, speed and price." Of course, who knows if what comes next will be any better, but at least admitting you have a problem is the first step...
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Yeah, that about sums it up...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Our statistical methodology seems almost calculated to obscure just how far our country is falling behind many other industrialized nations in broadband availability, adoption, speed and price."
almost? He says that like obscurity wasn't the main point behind such an obviously wrong method to start with.
How do these people get these jobs?
That's simple. No matter what coprorate america tells you the phrase, "It's not what you know but who you know." is still extremely true. A few games of golf, a couple of nice dinners, a vacation or two, and (the most important ingredient) a few large "donations" can get you damn near any job you want.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
a passing score on the civil service exam, which any idiot can pass, and a high school diploma. that's how.
if you are mediocre, probably a minority woman (not intended to be racist or feminist), and have no desire other than to collect a paycheck for 30 years without any effort or expectations on you, then our government is your employer of choice. everyone else that is worth a hoot, gets a real job.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pro-Republican Bigotry
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Incompetent by design
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:"How do people get these jobs?"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Truth, Lies, and Statistics!
Since that requires more work on the FCC as well an exposure that their current methodology is seriously not working... why on earth would it be in their best interest to have proper statistics?
Long gone are the days that management and direction of the FCC is to protect the public best interest. It's a shame as I'm sure there are plenty of good hard working people at the FCC that want to do the right thing. The management of the FCC is a low hanging dark cloud over most aspects of that administration.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Some problem
The only way to do a detailed statistical analysis is to take everyones home address, and paint that with their service provider. Let alone assure everyone that somehow this database will be safe.
I don't understand how many people would opt in to any level of detail, is they were asked.
And if too few opted in, your back to the zip-code thing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Some problem
someone has to pay property taxes on every property owned in a given municipality. the information is already collected and publicly available.
in the US, there are pretty much only two ways to get broadband, if it's available: from the cable company, or from the phone company. most of the time, you need either basic cable service or basic phone service in order to get broadband.
guess how the cable and telephone companies identify their customers? by either a telephone number or by address.
you don't need names to do the analysis... just addresses. those are already public records thanks to the property tax system.
the FCC can get the address information from the local governements, and the providers themselves can produce the subscriber info by address, not by name.
to determine competition, it's just a matter of seeing what percentage of addresses in a given ZIP have more than one choice for broadband internet access.
the problem isn't with getting the data... the problem is with ensuring that the data is accurate since the cable and telephone providers will lie to protect their monopolies.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Some problem
No, you have to be a bit more granular than that. Take it to the street level, and you're good. But an entire zip code is FAR too broad an area.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Some problem
The address of a building is pretty much public info. Just walk by and look at it. The Post Office, UPS, FedEx, Dominos and et al don't seem to have many problems finding an address.
The FCC needs to collect infrastructure info from the cable companies and telcos to know whether an address has broadband service available or not.
And on the competition side of things this will make it more difficult for telcos and cable companies to retain exclusive access to an area by not allowing competitors to use the infrastructure.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What about other countries
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: What about other countries
What kind of tautology logic is that?
For example, Iraq terrorists own propaganda is more reliable than Pentagon propaganda. The US has been taken down the toilet by the Bush regime that also installed this lying FCC. It's a long way back up, and your jingoistic ignorance is keeping us down.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
it's cronyism
The chairman of the FCC when these rules were formulated was Michael Powell, who has a long and undistinguished history of being Colin Powell's son.
Kevin Martin, the current chief, is a Republican crony lawyer. He's not a complete idiot, but he knows who butters his bread (large telecoms).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
FCC wrong on many things
[ link to this | view in chronology ]