FCC claimed that 19.4 million people don't have access to broadband. Now they're claiming that that number was a mistake and that the real number is 21.3 million, calling the 1.9 million a 'dramatic overstatement'.
Microsoft claims that it's closer to 162 million. And Microsoft is right. Please do a follow-up article that clarifies that all of the FCC data is complete and utter BS. For example, I live in an area in the Portland metro area with speeds of 1.5Mbps (still faster than 10Mbps satellite). I have been rendered invisible by the maps which list me as having gigabit service (987Mbps).
The FCC broadband maps hallucinate speeds and ISP availability. This stems from their working definition of the word “available.” The FCC defines an internet connection to be “available” for an area if the ISP could serve at least one premises without an extraordinary commitment of resources. (An “extraordinary commitment of resources” is undefined.) Defining “available” in this way does not match our English understanding of the word and leads to maps that are intentionally misleading and useless for research.
Ask for different data.
Industry advocates (ranging from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to Microsoft) suggest that we collect information on the connections that are actively being provided instead. For example, address, connection speed, and connection type.
This information is readily available to every ISP, and with it we can ask the questions that we can’t ask today. Namely; how many people benefited from a grant? How many households in Wallowa county are sold a broadband internet connection? And then you can use random sampling to gauge customer speeds. None of those questions can be addressed with the data that we currently collect.
See the recent report from Blandin Foundation: “Impact of CAF II-funded Networks: Lessons From Two Rural Exchanges Left Underserved.” "We predict the vast majority of households touched by the Connect America Fund will rapidly need another large subsidy to achieve high-quality Internet access." (ILSR report)
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This is all BS.
FCC claimed that 19.4 million people don't have access to broadband. Now they're claiming that that number was a mistake and that the real number is 21.3 million, calling the 1.9 million a 'dramatic overstatement'.
Microsoft claims that it's closer to 162 million. And Microsoft is right. Please do a follow-up article that clarifies that all of the FCC data is complete and utter BS. For example, I live in an area in the Portland metro area with speeds of 1.5Mbps (still faster than 10Mbps satellite). I have been rendered invisible by the maps which list me as having gigabit service (987Mbps).
The FCC broadband maps hallucinate speeds and ISP availability. This stems from their working definition of the word “available.” The FCC defines an internet connection to be “available” for an area if the ISP could serve at least one premises without an extraordinary commitment of resources. (An “extraordinary commitment of resources” is undefined.) Defining “available” in this way does not match our English understanding of the word and leads to maps that are intentionally misleading and useless for research.
Ask for different data.
Industry advocates (ranging from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to Microsoft) suggest that we collect information on the connections that are actively being provided instead. For example, address, connection speed, and connection type.
This information is readily available to every ISP, and with it we can ask the questions that we can’t ask today. Namely; how many people benefited from a grant? How many households in Wallowa county are sold a broadband internet connection? And then you can use random sampling to gauge customer speeds. None of those questions can be addressed with the data that we currently collect.
See the recent report from Blandin Foundation: “Impact of CAF II-funded Networks: Lessons From Two Rural Exchanges Left Underserved.” "We predict the vast majority of households touched by the Connect America Fund will rapidly need another large subsidy to achieve high-quality Internet access." (ILSR report)
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by M_Bison.
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