Government investment in broadband networks has emerged as one of the more controversial parts of the economic stimulus legislation slated for a Senate vote Tuesday. Already, at least $2 billion of a planned $9 billion for broadband has reportedly been cut from the latest bill, as legislators and interest groups squabble over who should control Internet infrastructure funding, and under what rules.

What should be less controversial is that intelligent spending decisions about funding for high-speed Internet connections can't be made without good-quality and transparent data about our broadband infrastructure.

The key public policy problem with broadband is that citizen-consumers and policy-makers still lack basic information. The Bush administration set a goal of achieving universal broadband by the end of 2007, then declared "mission accomplished" without providing much evidence to substantiate its claim. And under former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, the agency refused to release what data it did have about competitors in the broadband marketplace.

President Obama's commitment to "change" has included a more hands-on approach to promoting broadband. Throughout the presidential campaign, and repeatedly since the election, Obama has emphasized the importance of "expanding broadband lines across America." With input from his telecommunications advisors, the House stimulus bill included $6 billion for broadband. Early versions of the Senate measure raised the total to $9 billion.

Statistics?

Equally important is Obama's commitment to empirically-driven policymaking. In January, Obama became only the second president—after William Howard Taft in 1909—to invoke "statistics" in an inaugural address, when he spoke of "the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics."

When it comes to broadband, where are the statistics?

The key public policy problem with broadband is that citizen-consumers and policy-makers still lack basic information.

The US spends more than $8 billion a year on statistics. Much of that goes to fund the Census Bureau and data collection about agricultural and labor markets, such as the monthly unemployment report, which on Friday brought the grim news that the economy had shed 598,000 jobs in January. Last week, when the Agriculture Department released its own census, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack reminded reporters: "Numbers and data are very important. They direct policy; they shape policy. They can tell us what we are doing right. They call tell us what we are doing wrong."

Yet almost none of this $8 billion in statistical spending goes to compiling information about broadband, the infrastructure of the knowledge-based economy. And the data that has been collected has been made to mislead.

The FCC—the official record-keeper on private-sector telecommunications—for years claimed that there was adequate competition in broadband because the median ZIP code was served by eight separate providers. The Government Accountability Office's assessment of the same data found a median of two providers per ZIP code. Worse, the FCC refuses to release the information that it has about competition.

A variety of organizations—including my own free web service, BroadbandCensus.com—have stepped in to do our best at collecting, compiling and releasing public broadband information. We believe that if you want to build a road, you need a map that tells you where existing roads lie before you begin taking construction bids, let alone start pouring concrete. Where will our nation's new broadband highways, by-ways and access points be built? Who's going to let the contracts? Who will own this infrastructure?

These questions can't be answered without detailed broadband data. To that end, I've supported a proposed "State Broadband Planning and Assessment Act," which could be introduced as an amendment to the fiscal stimulus measure. The goal of this effort, as of BroadbandCensus.com, is to unleash the Internet as means of sharing information about the Internet itself.

For two-and-a-half years, I've been trying to get access to basic broadband data for the public, including citizen-consumers, businesses, and local policy-makers. I've been seeking to identify which carriers offer service in a particular ZIP code, as well as smaller units, like census blocks. In September 2006, when I headed a project at the Center for Public Integrity that investigated the telecommunications industry, we filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FCC to force them to release basic broadband data about carriers by ZIP code.

The project obtained and displayed similar location information about broadcasters and cable operators from the FCC's cumbersome web site. But our attempts to get broadband data were thwarted by the FCC and by industry. AT&T, Verizon Communications, and the lobbying organizations representing the Bell companies, the cable companies, the cell phone carriers, and wireless broadband providers all asked the FCC to deny information to the public. Even though every consumer who buys broadband knows the name of the company that provides them with service, the telecoms argued that compiling this information into a single location would reveal "proprietary" data. The FCC agreed.