Gigabyte March on Washington

Broadband pundit Karl Bode from Broadband Reports has a good follow up to Teletruths FCC filing on Data Quality. 

FCC Broadband Stats: Junk?
Critics claim data is skewed at industry's behest

While most of the media took the recent FCC broadband penetration statistics as gospel (hey, Uncle Sam doesn't tinker with data & science!), a number of critics wonder whether their statistics are accurate, or worse, being manipulated to justify hands-off policies beneficial to industry, but not the unwired... .

In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, FCC chief Kevin Martin praised his own policies, claiming that America "leads the world in the total number of broadband connections with 38 million subscribers," and that we were "well on our way to accomplishing the president's goal of universal, affordable access to broadband by 2007."

Maybe, but as telecom critic Bruce Kushnick points out, the FCC reclassified anything over 200kbps as broadband, making such a claim considerably easier. 

Teletruth has filed a Data Quality Act Complaint against the FCC's statistics, claiming that the FCC is politically driven to inflate the number of broadband connections in the United States, as well as presenting a distorted picture of broadband in the US.

In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by FCC Chairman Martin, "United States of Broadband", July 7, 2005, the Chairman claims America is number one in the world with 38 million broadband subscribers.

What Chairman Martin does not say is that the FCC's definition of broadband includes anything over 200K (Kilobytes-per-second), and in only one direction. This, of course, inflates the broadband number to make America appear to be number one in broadband.

Continuing coverage and information is available at Teletruth.

Via FreePress News :

Reporting from the Associated Press, July 15, 2005

Crafting new rules on how many broadcast stations and newspapers one company can own is not going to be easy, since federal regulators can’t even agree on how to get started.

The Federal Communications Commission was slated to discuss a rewrite of ownership rules at its monthly public meeting Thursday, but the issue was pulled from the agenda at the last minute. A set of rules issued in 2003 was rejected by the courts.

FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said there were disagreements among the agency’s four commissioners about the kind of public input that would be sought in writing new rules.

“The commission was trying to move very aggressively in restarting the proceeding,” Martin said. “We’ll be able to try to get something out as soon as we’re able to reach any kind of compromise.”

Martin gave no timetable on when the commission might revisit the issue, and few expect it to happen anytime soon. Full Article 

From National Journal's Tech Daily 6/6/05

New ISP Coalition Seeks To Preserve Competition
by Randy Barrett

A new coalition of independent Internet service providers (ISPs), vendor associations and public-interest groups has formed to fight for full competition in the high-speed Internet marketplace.

The new Telecom Summit Ad Hoc Committee includes CompTel/ALTS, Consumers Union, EarthLink, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), the Federation of Internet Service Providers of the Americas, and the Washington Bureau for Internet Advocacy (WBIA), among other organizations.

"What we want is to continue to have open access," said committee organizer Cynthia DeLorenzi, CEO of Patriot Computer Group in Fairfax, Va., and a WBIA co-founder. "We can drive penetration where they want to go." Currently there are about 6,000 independent ISPs in the United States.

Independent ISPs face a tough fight as the dominant telecom carriers such as BellSouth, Qwest Communications International, SBC Communications and Verizon Communications push for a rewrite of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The Bells want to end federal regulation of their networks, an outcome that ISPs and competitive carriers generally oppose.

Additionally, late last month the Supreme Court ruled that cable companies do not need to open their networks to broadband competitors, delivering more bad news to ISPs. DeLorenzi said the new group will press Congress to slow the telecom rewrite train. "We are urging legislators to back off a bit," she said. The committee also hopes to unify the message from the often-disparate ISP industry.

The new committee is self-funded, with members pitching in what they can, DeLorenzi said. "We see this as another opportunity for people to get together and work toward a common goal," said Earl Comstock, CEO of CompTel/ALTS, a group of Bell competitors and some Internet telephony firms. "We're excited to have some other folks joining the fray." ITAA is eager to see a varied ISP industry survive. Its member companies provide the networking, hardware and software gear that make the Internet run.

"ISPs have played an important role in connectivity," ITAA counsel Mark Uncapher said. "Our concern is what's happening in the broadband world is the facilities of network providers are being leveraged to eliminate the independent ISPs."

Market diversity is important to Harold Feld, senior vice president of the Media Access Project, a public-interest law firm. "People should have the freedom to communicate without potential for corporate gatekeepers to get in the way," he said.

The new group plans to lobby Congress and tap into the grassroots power of its ISP-member customer base. "It's an opportunity to reach a group of folks who aren't necessarily focused on Washington," Comstock said.