Rural Americans Suffer the Costs of Faulty FCC Broadband Data - Pacific Standard: The FCC conducts a review of the state of broadband deployment and access every year, as required by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. As part of this analysis, the FCC must determine whether high-speed broadband is being deployed to "all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion."
Here, accurate data is crucial. If the FCC finds that high-speed broadband is not being deployed to all Americans in the way it spells out, it must "take immediate action to accelerate deployment." In other words, if broadband isn't being deployed in a timely way to all Americans, the FCC is obligated to enact policies to remedy that. But without reliable data, the FCC might restrict its own ability to do what it's supposed to do. (Emphasis added)
The premise here is flawed. The FCC has already hampered its own ability to ensure universal advanced telecommunications service by failing to consistently regulate it as a common carrier telecommunications utility under Title II of the Communications Act. That regulatory regime accelerates deployment by mandating universal service and prohibiting neighborhood redlining by requiring ISPs to honor reasonable requests for service.
Instead, the agency has vacillated over the past two decades between regulating it under that scheme and as an information service under Title I of the statute. Most recently, the FCC has shifted back to Title I information service regulation after repealing its Title II-based 2015 Open Internet regulations in late 2017. The lack of a consistent regulatory policy and the resulting infrastructure deficiencies is spawning a movement to deprivatize advanced telecom infrastructure as localities study ways to finance and build their own.
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