Tracking broadband data...

[Commentary] Something that's become increasingly clear as we've been drafting the National Broadband Plan is the need for good data on broadband: Where is it available? From how many providers? At what speeds? How many people subscribe? How robust is the competition? We've tried to gather and analyze all the data we can get our hands on, which has made us increasingly aware of the shortcomings of the data historically collected by the Commission. As a result, the Plan will include recommendations on improving FCC data collection, analysis, and reporting going forward.

Good data practices will help policymakers meet the Plan's goal of robust broadband access for everyone, as well as giving researchers and consumers more of the information they want.

This brings us to the FCC's latest report on broadband service, known as the High-Speed Report. The FCC has published this report twice annually for the past decade, based on data that carriers must submit using Form 477. Released on Friday, the report uses much better data now than in the past, reflecting improvements made by the Commission in 2008. However we recognize that the Form 477 data could still be improved. To take one example, the current report does not provide sufficient information to assess competition.

The FCC collects its data with a promise of confidentiality for provider-specific data, which requires that the data be aggregated for reporting purposes. Therefore today, in some of the maps in the Report, a provider is depicted as serving a census tract even if it has only a single customer there or serves only a small portion of a geographically large census tract. Because of this aggregation, the reported counts of "number of providers" cannot be interpreted as the number of competitors among which consumers can choose their broadband service. And even if they are available to the same customers, some of the offerings may not effectively compete - consumers may not view 768kbps DSL service as a close substitute for 6 Mbps cable modem service.

Furthermore, in some places in the report, high-speed connections are defined for historical reasons as 200 kbps - not really broadband by any current standard. Although this threshold has been chosen to be consistent with past reporting practices, it makes some of the report's maps showing ubiquitous coverage overly optimistic.

Finally, although we will be sharing as much data as we can with state regulators and mapping entities, as well as posting information online for researchers and the public, we recognize that the confidentiality requirements necessary for comprehensive data collection to some extent limit the analyses that third parties may be able to conduct.

[Sharon Gillett is Chief of the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau and Paul de Sa is Chief of the FCC's Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis]