Congress finally passes broadband data collection bill

By Nate Anderson

While spending a busy weekend trying to bail out the nation's troubled financial system, Congress also found time to tell the FCC that its current method for collecting broadband usage data is unacceptable. The Senate passed S. 1942, the Broadband Data Improvement Act, after the House passed a similar bill in late 2007. The bill, which has bipartisan support, directs the FCC to get better data on broadband and to report on it more often.

Rather than release "periodic" reports, for instance, the FCC would have to report yearly on US broadband, and these reports would have to list:

• the types of technology used to provide the broadband service capability to which consumers subscribe;
  
• the amounts consumers pay per month for such capability;
  
• the actual data transmission speeds of such capability;
  
• the types of applications and services consumers most frequently use in conjunction with such capability;
  
• for consumers who have declined to subscribe to broadband service capability, the reasons given by such consumers for declining such capability

The Census Bureau would also include questions on computer ownership and Internet connection methods as part of its work.

The FCC has historically collected quite limited data on broadband. Its definition of "broadband," for example, is famously low (200Kbps) and the agency only collects data at the ZIP code level. If a single customer in a ZIP code has broadband service, the entire ZIP code is counted "served." The new bills will force the FCC to collect far more interesting data, and to generate more useful metrics for judging the success of broadband rollouts, including the average price for each megabit-per-second, and the actual speeds that broadband users get.

Free Press, the group that recently pushed the FCC complaint against Comcast's P2P blocking practices, was pleased with the bill's passage.

"Our current broadband data collection system has had serious problems for years," said Ben Scott, the group's policy director. "The absence of accurate information about the price, speed, and availability of high-speed broadband has crippled our government's ability to advance innovative technology policies. In the last year, the FCC has taken some very important steps toward solving these problems. This bill gives more momentum to that progress."

Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the Democratic chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, called the bill an important step forward. "The federal government has a responsibility to ensure the continued rollout of broadband access, as well as the successful deployment of the next generation of broadband technology," he said. "But as I have said before, we cannot manage what we do not measure. This bill will give us the baseline statistics we need in order to eventually achieve the successful deployment of broadband access and services to all Americans."

The two bills have plenty of similarities, but also some key differences; the Senate version, for instance, tacks on a "child pornography enforcement" section and an Internet safety campaign. Changes need to be hammered out this week before Congress recesses.

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