Comments on: Silly Strickling: Carriers Won't Share Broadband Data

By: Hard Questions for the Broadband Stimulus Program – GigaOM

Hard Questions for the Broadband Stimulus Program – GigaOM — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:05:54 +0000

[...] had service. That’s a slow process without a national broadband map, so it takes a while to prove if carriers serve a project area or [...]

By: FCC orders studies, then relies on Teclo data after all |

FCC orders studies, then relies on Teclo data after all | — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:10:46 +0000

[...] The FCC’s own deadline for acceptance of applications for broadband stimulus applications has arrived. While a ton of money is being spent on studies, none will be completebefore the balnce of the money is spent. The FCC will continue to rely on Telco data to decide how stimulus money will be allocated. …..the government has decided to back off from its demands for quality data about current broadband access and speeds from a third party and instead rely on the telecommunications industry’s information. On Friday, the Department of Commerce, which is running the National Telecommunications Information Agency, declared that the broadband maps only needs to contain block-level data, not the address-level data for which consumers groups had hoped. And it said the maps don’t need to contain information about the actual speeds offered because the large telcos view such information as competitive and wouldn’t give it up. I told you so. [...]

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:18:34 +0000

The above is incorrect. Carriers don’t want to share data because it would effectively be using government funds to do research for their competitors.

Worse still, that data could be used, by the larger ones, to engage in precisely targeted anticompetitive practices that destroy smaller competitors.

If you don’t believe that they’d do this, see

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Shaw-Drops-Pricing-Bomb-To-Destroy-Local-Fiber-ISP-103670

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/101661

and

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/73694

for some examples.

I run a small, competitive ISP. The locations of our access points and the precise boundaries of our coverage area are very sensitive information. Given this information, a large competitor (e.g. an ILEC or cable company) with a good GIS database could literally target us with predatory pricing and “lock-in” contracts on a block-by-block basis. We’ve seen situations where an ILEC “hounded” a WISP, putting remote terminals in areas to which it expanded even though it was not profitable to do so.

This is why the FCC allowed ISPs to opt to keep their Form 477 data private, and fought Drew Clark’s FOIA lawsuit (before he started “broadbandcensus.com”) demanding the release of Form 477 data.

For the FCC’s own statements on this, see the deposition of Alan Feldman of the WTB at

http://projects.publicintegrity.org/docs/telecom/telecomfoia/10.1%20Feldman%20Decl.pdf

and also the FCC’s statement at

http://projects.publicintegrity.org/docs/telecom/telecomfoia/09.1%20Statement%20of%20Facts.pdf

The bottom line: Any census — whether it’s of people or of broadband — should be confidential.

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:08:41 +0000

It’s not as sinister as all that. Carriers don’t share this data because they are giant bureaucracies (larger than the Federal Agencies they deal with) who don’t like to do anything beyond business as usual. The data itself is not centralized within the company and many layers of management that normally have nothing to do with each other would have to coordinate to compile it and review what should be made available.

By: Lee Drake

Lee Drake — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:01:10 +0000

I am totally with you on this. The big companies are afraid that if we knew how much they really make on broadband and how uncompetitive the markets are within certain speed/capacity ranges they know they would be regulated. We need an FCC that stands up to these companies and demands the data required to properly evaluate how monopolistic their presence is and regulates where there is no market pressure to hold prices down – not only in internet but in cable provision as well. Without a strong FCC the consumer in the midmarket is the one ends up paying through the nose for services they can get in other municipalities for a fraction of the price