FCC Admits Mistakes In Measuring Broadband Competition

techdirtfeed writes "For years, plenty of folks (including the Government Accountability Office) have been pointing out that the way the FCC measures broadband competition is very flawed. It simply assumes that if a single household in a zip code is offered broadband by provider A, then every household in that zip code can get broadband from provider A. See the problem? For some reason the FCC still hasn't changed its ways, but at least they're starting to realize the problem. They're now saying they need to change the way they measure competition. Commissioner Michael Copps points out: 'Our statistical methodology seems almost calculated to obscure just how far our country is falling behind many other industrialized nations in broadband availability, adoption, speed and price.'"

Comments

DSL only recently became available for me

[Rick17JJ]

Until recently 26.4 K dial-up was all that was available where I live. Neither broadband cable or DSL was available and even 56K dial-up was not available (just 26.4K). Then a few months ago DSL finally became available and I now can download at 1.5 MBs and upload at about 800 K. The 26.4K was such a pain when I was taking several college classes that had lots of graphics intensive online study material. Security updates for Windows and Linux sometimes took hours to download.

I live in a small city in Arizona, but am not in a rural area. Most people in my Zip code did have cable and in some also had DSL available, but not where I live.

Re:Isn't the Zip code unusually large

[Copid]

So they call everybody?

That doesn't sound that reasonable to me at all. They should be able to provide a list of addresses or phone numbers to the broadband provider and have that provider say yay or nay. That's how you do it on the broadband providers' web sites as it is. All the regulatory agency has to do is give a more granular list for the provider to check against in their database, and then randomly sample the results to ensure that the provider didn't make a mistake or lie to them. That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Not so simple

[cdrguru]

Cable access is pretty simple. Either the provider offers it or they do not. For the most part, it is system-wide today and not a lot of areas have cable but no Internet connectivity through it.

DSL is not so simple. You need an unbroken copper pair from the CO to the house. Most newer subdivisions in Illinois use a fiber connection to a vault and then copper from the vault to the houses. There is no room in the vault for a DSLAM, so no DSL. Especially there is no room in the vault for multiple DSLAM's so there could be at most one or two providers. This was a clear violation of the rules a few years back and the only way out was "No DSLAM period." So that is how it works in newer areas.

Older areas are generally copper to the CO without any interruptions but you do have the maximum distance limit. Many homes have fine telephone service out past 17,000 feet from the CO - no DSL for them. Past around 12,000 you aren't going to get much beyond 512K anyway, at least without quite a bit of searching for a good pair.

So cable is simple and DSL is complicated. To determine if a given address can get DSL you need to know both the distance to the CO, the facilities in the CO and the type of connectivity to the house. This is not easy outside of major metropolitan areas.

ZIP code is about as close as you could get for an approximation. Anything else would be either block-by-block or individual homes. Maybe they could get this information into the 2010 census because that would be about the only practical way to collect the volume of information that would be needed.

Re:Isn't the Zip code unusually large

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive my lack of American knowledge but would there not be someone somewhere who knows what these ZIP+5 codes correspond to?

I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand your question here.

Did you mean a website that provides zip code information and statistics such as what's 90210 like?

Or did you mean a site that explained what a zip code+4 is?

I'm genuinely asking, not being a smart ass. The links are provided to answer the question if that's actually what you meant.

Not news for most consumers

[GodfatherofSoul]

I live in Kansas City and I've moved around the metropolitan area about 5 times in the last 8 years. Some areas of the city must have some sort of exclusivity contracts since there's only one cable provider. Not coincidentally, these are the areas with the higher prices and unforgivably hideous customer service. I'd like to see some investigation into why cable providers are allowed to stake out exclusive territories in an otherwise homogenous metropolitan region.