Mapping Broadband in the U.S.
Oct 30, 2007
The U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce is scheduled to hold an open markup session today in which it will review proposed legislation called the Broadband Census of America Act. Sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), chairman of the subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, the bill calls for a comprehensive national broadband inventory map that would be made available to the public via the Internet within two years of the bill being enacted.
There's been widespread interest - and demand - for more tools to assess the state of broadband in the United States to enable better policymaking. Specifically, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has come under fire repeatedly for not having accurate, detailed data on broadband adoption and usage. Critics claim that the FCC overstates broadband penetration by crediting an entire zip code as having access even if the area only has one subscriber, and by measuring high-speed access as data transmission of 200 Kbps instead of a faster rate.
Cisco has been one of the strongest supporters of a new approach to broadband measurement and, according to this blog post by its director of technology and communications policy, a national broadband mapping bill is long overdue. Jeff Campbell writes, "during the years that we all have been debating whether we have enough broadband or fast enough broadband, one interesting little detail has always been true -- we really don't know where broadband is available nor do we know what speeds are available." Hopefully, that will change soon.
Note: Today's House markup session will be available via Webcast starting at 2:00pm ET.
Tags:
Broadband, FCC, House of Representatives
