The FCC announced today that it has started recruiting first-hand accounts of people who are forced to rely on bad internet. This new initiative is part of the FCC’s broadband data collection program, and the agency hopes that by collecting information directly from consumers, it will be better equipped to improve the accuracy of existing broadband cards.
“There are too many Americans leaving access to employment, education and health care if they do not have access to broadband,” FCC Acting President Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement announcing the initiative. “The collection of consumer data directly affected by the lack of broadband access will help inform the FCC’s mapping efforts and future decisions on where service is needed.”
Anyone who wants to tell the FCC how bad their internet is can use this form to talk about any internet related issues. ISP suffocating your internet? Write it down. ISP will not upgrade your old DSL service? Write it down. Do not have internet at all because you live in a rural area and HughesNet is too expensive? Write everything down.
According to the FCC, this new website will also become an informative hub for the Broadband Data Collection program, a kind of one-stop shop for consumers and industry stakeholders to keep track of what’s happening in the world of home internet. And once the FCC has collected enough personal anecdotes, the agency will provide information on the yet-to-be-established new broadband data collection systems.
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On the one hand, it looks like a refreshing change of pace compared to how the FCC did things under the previous government. But at the same time there are already heaps of anecdotal evidence out there about how the broadband coverage and speed of the country is lagging behind. The media, various organizations and data companies have already reported on the situation and the reports would point the FCC in the right direction.
BroadbandNow, for example, has an in-depth map showing every US census block that does not have a rural broadband provider. Restoring the gap in Form 477 – which enabled ISPs to report that an entire census block was covered by their service, even though only one house was actually subscribed in the census block – was a start. But the FCC is using the flawed data as a basis for ISPs to present at its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction last year, which asked municipal broadband providers and electric cooperatives to question whether the grant money went to the right companies. Not to mention previous RDOF auction winners could not provide rural america with internet in the time frame they said.
There’s also a bit of irony in directing it which is “directly affected by the lack of broadband access” to an online form as the only way to tell the FCC how the lack of broadband access is affecting their lives. Come on, FCC. You can do better than this half attempt to figure out the actual number of people in the US does not have reliable internet access and how it affects them.