Setting the Record Straight on Open Internet Comments

Some key takeaways from the Federal Communications Commission inquiry into Open Internet comments:

1. The total comment count in the Open Internet docket is nearly 4 million -- the same number that has been widely reported. These comments -- whether received via Electronic Comment Filing system (ECFS), the openinternet@fcc.gov email box, CSV upload, or paper -- are in ECFS where the public can view them and the FCC can draw upon them.
2. In parsing the XML files in question, it appears that nearly 680,000 of the comments were not transferred successfully from ECFS to the XML files. This is due to a technical error involving Apache Solr, an open source tool the FCC used to produce the XML files. We plan to fix this problem by issuing a new set of XML files after the New Year with the full set of comments received during the reply period. Despite the fact that this group of comments was not transferred to the XML files, our review indicates that these files were uploaded to ECFS for public review.
3. An October 22nd blog post describing the second round of comments included a discrepancy regarding how the comments were received. While the blog post correctly states the total number of comments received at the end of the second round -- approximately 2.5 million -- the breakdown of the number of comments received by email vs. ECFS and CSV was incorrect. The October 22 blog post has been corrected to fix this discrepancy.

[Dec 23]