FCC Adopts New Broadband Reporting Requirements

Doug Williams | March 20, 2008, 12:26 PM

Yesterday, the FCC adopted an Order seeking to “increase the precision and quality of broadband subscribership data collected every six months from broadband service providers.” The Order has not yet been released, but the bottom line appears to be that data will be gathered at a more granular level, relying on census tracts rather than geographic zip codes. According to the Census Bureau:

Census tracts are small, relatively permanent geographic entities within counties (or the statistical equivalents of counties) delineated by a committee of local data users. Generally, census tracts have between 2,500 and 8,000 residents and boundaries that follow visible features. When first established, census tracts are to be as homogeneous as possible with respect to population characteristics, economic status, and living conditions.

Carriers are also required to report subscriber speeds according to the following tiers:

1st Generation Data – 200 kbps to 768 kbps
Basic Broadband Tier 1 – 768 kbps to 1.5 Mbps
Broadband Tier 2 – 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps
Broadband Tier 3 – 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps
Broadband Tier 4 – 6 Mbps to 10 Mbps
Broadband Tier 5 – 10 Mbps to 25 Mbps
Broadband Tier 6 – 25 Mbps to 100 Mbps
Broadband Tier 7 – Greater than 100 Mbps

(These are download speeds only, so it is unclear at this time whether carriers will be required to report upload speeds, and if so, what speed tiers have been defined.)

Kudos to the FCC for (finally) moving in this direction. This is clearly a policy-making tool, which the FCC will be able to utilize to develop further policies to encourage broadband deployment.

Ironically, the FCC concurrently released its latest High-Speed Services for Internet Access report and adopted (but has yet to release) its Fifth Section 706 report to Congress, in which it concludes that broadband services are currently being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. (See press release above.)

Of course, these reports and the conclusions drawn rely on the policy guidelines and data-gathering that the Commission just determined to be insufficient.