Who Will Map US Broadband?

There's a $350 million slice of pie in President Obama's stimulus plan that watchdog groups are starting to eye with concern. At stake is the question of who will control the process of mapping the penetration of broadband access across the US. Boosted by an array of official accolades, one nonprofit looks especially well-positioned for the job: Connected Nation. Last July, AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., and other companies issued a letter backing public-private partnerships to collect information about broadband deployment, and referenced Connected Nation's work in particular. Connected Nation has worked on the state level, as well, to contribute to similar publicly backed mapping efforts for years. But Connected Nation's ties to the broadband industry make some critics squeamish about putting the company in charge. As nonprofits Common Cause, Public Knowledge, and others detail in a new report, industry players heavily populate Connected Nation's board of directors, including senior executives from Comcast Corp., Verizon, and AT&T. Meanwhile, Connected Nation's previous state-level mapping initiatives — for example, in North Carolina — have relied extensively on non-disclosure agreements that limit identification of broadband providers and also require that information collected remain corporate property.