US broadband program -- too much like old times?

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission just issued a request for opinion as to "whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion" as required by section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The request notes that in each of the previous five Section 706 reports to Congress the FCC concluded that broadband was being deployed "in a reasonable and timely fashion." Very few other than some carriers and the FCC itself agreed with that assessment. The new request notes that "these conclusions, however, rested on data increasingly criticized as lacking sufficient detail to support robust analyses." The request notes that Congress got fed up with the FCC's relying on crappy data and told it to do better. The FCC did ask better questions this time, but has yet to finish analyzing the data so we do not know if it will continue to play the role of Pollyanna.