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FCC Releases Broadband Report, Admits Data is Faulty

But agency proclaims U.S. broadband competition is healthy

By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.com

March 21, 2008 

The FCC issued its "Section 706" report on wireline broadband competition, with chairman Kevin Martin claiming that broadband adoption has grown 950% from just over 9 million lines to over 100 million lines during his tenure as Commissioner.

"The ability to share increasing amounts of information at greater and greater speeds, increases productivity, facilitates interstate commerce, and helps drive innovation," Martin said.

"Our analysis indicates that more than 99% of the country's population lives in the more than 99% of ZIP codes where a provider reports having at least one highspeed service subscriber," Martin said. "Accordingly, I support the conclusion in the Section 706 report that broadband services are currently being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion."

Falling behind

Not all of Martin's fellow Commissioners agreed.

"The fact is the U.S. has dropped [in broadband adoption rankings] year-after-year," said Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein."This downward trend and the lack of broadband value illustrate the sobering point that when it comes to giving our citizens affordable access to state-of the-art communications, the U.S. has fallen behind its global competitors."

Adelstein pointed to data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranking the U.S. at 11th and 21st among developed nations for broadband adoption.

Fellow Commissioner Michael Copps also criticized the Section 706 report for what he called "the indefensible way we have gone about gathering data—and still gather it today."

Broadband brass tacks

The key criticism of the FCC's broadband reports has been its reliance on a data collection method that measures broadband availability by ZIP code. If even one subscriber in the ZIP code has access to broadband, the entire region is deemed successful, regardless of whether or not other residents have broadband connections.

The FCC's reporting methods also fail to account for pricing of the broadband packages available to residents of the region, which overlooks the possibility that consumers may not be getting all the bang for the buck they should be. Moreover, the FCC's standard for "broadband" is a woefully slow 200 kilobits per second, not even equal to the slowest DSL connection.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticized the FCC's data-gathering process in 2006, and many consumer groups have called on the agency to reform its procedures -- or for Congress to do it for them. Senator Daniel Inouye introduced the "Broadband Data Improvement Act" in July 2007 specifically to force the agency to adopt new standards for its broadband measurements.

Although the Act itself did not become law, the issue became a focal point of criticism for the FCC.

The FCC's new broadband data collection order will require broadband providers to report numbers of broadband subscribers by census tract, broken down by four speed tiers and several technology types, with the new "floor" for broadband speeds set at 768 kilobits per second. 64 megabits per second will be the fastest of the four tiers.

Copps praised the FCC for improving its practices while stating the agency still has far to go in its mission to provide accurate broadband information for the United States.

"The truth remains that, time and time again, we have failed to heed the call of scholars, industry, consumers, and the Government Accountability Office to improve our datagathering," Copps said. "It is truly shocking that we still rely on an absurdly dated definition of broadband speed and a 5-digit ZIP code methodology that didn't pass the red face test even when we introduced it many years ago."

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