Senate Guts Broadband Data Bill
from the not-so-special-after-all dept
You may have heard recently about the new Broadband Data Improvement Act, passing through Congress, as it basically put into law what the FCC had already decided: the cutoff for what should be considered broadband needed to be raised, and the data collection methods for broadband penetration needed to be updated, from the clearly bogus methodology it currently uses.
Sounds good, right?
Except, as Broadband Reports lets us know, in moving from the House to the Senate, some Senators took the opportunity to gut the bill of most of its important parts. That is, it took away all funding for the FCC to actually measure broadband penetration in the US and took away the mandate to create a broadband penetration mapping solution. In other words, the Broadband Data Improvement Act has removed the ability for the FCC to improve broadband data.
Now, you could argue that the FCC shouldn’t be wasting money on measuring this sort of stuff, but if you happen to believe that broadband is critical infrastructure these days, and an enabler of many other industries that drive economic growth, you can make a reasonable argument for why the government should have accurate data on broadband penetration, to make sure that we’re not falling too far behind other countries.
Filed Under: broadband, broadband penetration, data collection, fcc
Companies: fcc
Comments on “Senate Guts Broadband Data Bill”
so what's left
what is there left then?
Re: so what's left
what is there left then?
Pork!
this is a shame
Wow, one more screw up from congress. I am tempted to say jetison our elected leaders and start fresh. The current crop is too old to really guide america in the current conditions and they lack any general understanding of what the typical citizen goes through.
I wrote a comment in regard to the bill.
link to bill
Here’s the link to the bill
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.1492:
No lobbyist left behind. Your senate whores at their best.