Regulatory News: FCC Mapquest: Broadband Measurements
So the FCC wants to get serious about broadband availability measurements, voting on a new mapping plan, March 19, 2008. The FCC’s mapping plan followed the release of new data on high-speed connections to the Internet in the United States as of June 30, 2007, as required by the FCC’s local telephone competition and broadband data gathering program (FCC.gov 2008).
“The more-detailed data the FCC will ask for in the future, including what upload and download speeds are offered as well as more detailed customer locations, will enable a far better analysis of the current state of noncompetition (or at best, duopoly) in most of the United States” (Bradner 2008).
The plan would use the Census tract, which is a geographic region that is much smaller than the zip code regions. Broadband speed tiers will also be identified in the mapping plan, with 200K bps as the low tier, with tiers ranging upwards of 768K bps to 6M bps as the fastest tier (Gross 2008).
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps voiced his opinion that the price information should be addressed now as well. “Value—the price per bit—after all, is broadband’s killer application, and if we don’t understand what kind of value broadband is bringing into people’s homes and offices, we can’t really understand where we are and what remains to be done” (Copps 2008).
Sources:
Bradner, Scott. , (2008, March 31). FCC: Consistent To A Fault, But There Is A (Small) Hope. Network World. Vol. 25 Issue 13, p29-29, 1/2p.
FCC. Statement Of Commissioner Michael J. Copps. (2008, March 19). Re: Development of Nationwide Broadband Data to Evaluate Reasonable and TimelyDeployment of Advanced Services to All Americans, Improvement of Wireless Broadband Subscribership Data, and Development of Data on Interconnected Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) Subscribership, WC Docket 07-38, R&O and FNPRM. Retrieved April 10, 2008 from http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-280909A3.pdf.
FCC. (2008). Federal Communications Commission Releases Data On High-Speed Services For Internet Access. Retrieved April 14, 2008 from http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-280904A1.pdf
Gross, Grant. (2008, March 19). FCC Approves New Broadband Mapping Plan. Retrieved April 10, 2008 from http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143619-pg,1/article.html