Commerce Department Drops Request for Sensitive Broadband Data

The Commerce Department said Friday it agreed to drop a request for sensitive revenue and infrastructure data from telecom carriers as part of an Internet mapping project that will spur President Barack Obama's goal of blanketing the country with high-speed broadband. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration released a clarification Friday of its data requirements. The agreement comes about a week after a wide-ranging group of telecom associations complained that the NTIA was seeking sensitive and irrelevant information. The deal also resolves a potential standoff between the government and carriers that probably would sue rather than turn over revenue numbers about their Internet subscribers. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and several telecom associations like USTelecom, the American Cable Association, and the Wireless Communications Association International agreed to give the government access to their firms' Internet availability based on census blocks. The Commerce Department originally wanted to know about Internet availability on an address-by-address basis. The problem, according to consumer advocates and researchers, is that Internet data compiled state by state would be inferior to a national database that could be put together by the Federal Communications Commission. Without a national standard, the Internet data provided by individual carriers could meld together to be gibberish. "Significant questions remain as to the consistency of data collected across 50 different states, as well as the accuracy and verifiability of the information," the Internet advocacy group Free Press wrote to the FCC last week.