The FCC announced today that it has begun to request first-hand accounts from people forced to rely on worthless internet. This new initiative is part of the FCC’s broadband data collection program and the agency hopes that by gathering information directly from consumers it will be better able to “improve the accuracy of its existing broadband maps”.
“Far too many Americans are lagging behind in access to jobs, education and health care without broadband access,” acting FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement announcing the initiative. “Gathering data from consumers directly affected by the lack of broadband access will help map the FCC and future decisions about where service is needed.”
Anyone who wants to tell the FCC how bad their internet is can use this form to talk about internet-related misery. ISP throttling your internet? Write it down. ISP Won’t Upgrade Your Old DSL Service? Write it down. Don’t have internet at all because you live in the countryside and HughesNet is too damn expensive? Write it all down.
The FCC says this new website will also become an information center for the Broadband Data Collection program, a sort of one-stop shop for consumers and industry stakeholders to keep up to date with what’s happening in the home internet world. And once the FCC has gathered enough personal anecdotes, the agency will provide information on its yet to be established new broadband data collection reporting systems.
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On the one hand, this seems like a refreshing change of pace from how 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, various organizations and data companies have already reported on the situation, and those reports would point the FCC in the right direction.
Broadband NowFor example, has an extensive map showing every US census block that does not have a terrestrial broadband provider. Solving the reporting loophole in Form 477 – allowing ISPs to report that an entire census block was under their service, even if only one home in that census block actually subscribed to that service – was a start. But the FCC used that flawed data as the basis for ISPs to bid last year in its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, which spurred municipal broadband providers and electrical cooperatives ask whether the subsidy money has gone to the right companiesNot to mention past RDOF auction winners have not been able to supply rural America with the Internet in the time they said they would
There is also a bit of irony in directing it which are “directly affected by the lack of broadband access” on an online form the only way to tell the FCC how lack of broadband access is affecting their lives. Come on, FCC. You can do better than this half-hearted attempt to find out how many people in the US really are do not have reliable access to the Internet and how that affects them