Broadband Access

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On September 27, the Senate passed the "Broadband Data Improvement Act," introduced last year by Senate Commerce Committee chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI). The House of Representatives passed companion legislation on Monday, and sent the bill to President Bush`s desk for signature into law.

Inouye hailed the bill`s passage as a stepping-stone to providing broadband access to the nation.

"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," Inouye 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 legislation would make several changes to how the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and other agencies handle their collection of data on broadband Internet, including:

• A mandate for the FCC to report to Congress annually on the state of broadband adoption in America, rather than periodically. The FCC report would have to list what kind of technologies citizens use to access the Internet, the cost per month of the services, what applications or devices they use in conjunction with their service, and how fast the connection speeds really are.

• Adding a question to the Census Bureau survey asking if the respondent uses dial-up or broadband for their Internet access.

• Tasking the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to create tools to help consumers evaluate the speed and availability of broadband Internet, as well as how the United States` Internet availability compares with other countries.

• Establishing grants for nonprofit, public-private enterprises to study barriers to broadband adoption across the country.

The House and Senate bills had several differences, but were eventually whittled down, with the only remaining change being that the House version required reports to be sent to the House Commerce Committee as well as the Senate.

Media watchdog group Free Press said the legislation represented "a crucial step toward a national broadband policy."

"Our current broadband data collection system has had serious problems for years," said Free Press` policy director Ben Scott. "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."

The FCC has been heavily criticized in recent years for using poor data-gathering techniques that did not accurately measure what parts of the country actually had access to broadband. Under the old system, if a single subscriber in a ZIP code had broadband Internet access, the entire region was considered covered.

The FCC in June announced major revisions to its data collection system, including setting its minimum standard for broadband from 200 kbps to 768 kbps, the average speed of a slow DSL connection.

But the agency simultaneously released a report claiming that broadband availability was on the rise for all Americans--using the old statistics.

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