How Should We Spend $350 Million On Broadband Mapping/Tracking?

[Commentary] Included in the stimulus bill is $350 million for mapping the availability and tracking the adoption of broadband. That's a huge sum of money with which we can do great things, so how should we spend all those dollars so as to maximize their impact on the state of broadband in the US? First we should gather as much data as possible. Next that data should be as granular as possible. Finally everything should be as transparent as possible. But we also need to track demand for broadband. In particular we need a baseline for how people, businesses, and institutions are using broadband today so we can track how their usage is growing tomorrow. Also valuable would be a sense for how much market demand any given community has for broadband as this is data that can be used to justify the buildout of new networks to supply bandwidth to that demand.