The United States government's National Broadband Map has been out for three months and hasn't generated much heat—until now. Suddenly advocates from the New America Foundation are posting commentaries calling the project a big disappointment.

"We think that with a few vital improvements, the map could easily become an exemplar of government data transparency as well as an incredibly useful tool for US residents and policymakers," write Benjamin Lennett and Sascha Meinrath on Slate. "But without these improvements, the National Broadband Map runs the risk of becoming a $350 million boondoggle—a map to nowhere filled with inaccurate and useless information."

"Map to nowhere"? Ouch. That's a phrase reminiscent of potshots taken at the Obama administration's $7.1 billion broadband stimulus package, sometimes called "broadband to nowhere" by critics.

The alleged problems are twofold. First, the map doesn't display information about Internet Service Provider prices. And second, its data on ISP speeds relies heavily on information provided by the companies themselves.

"Anyone who's ever checked their connection speed knows that real-life speeds tend to be substantially lower than what you're paying for," they note.

The Federal Communications Commission, on whose site the map is posted, was quick to reply to the charges. The criticisms "miss almost entirely the real story regarding broadband data and the FCC, including the National Broadband Map," countered the agency's Steven Rosenberg.

Before we get any deeper into these quarrelsome weeds, some background on the map is in order.

Stimulus tracker

Congress requires the FCC to track the nation's progress on broadband deployment via various statistical methods and, most notably, its Annual Broadband Progress report. But the National Broadband Map goes a step further. Commissioned by the February 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act at a cost of up to $350 million, the map was informed by the complaint that most government telecommunications data is packaged for the wonk sub-genus of the human species, not for normal people.

And so, "not later than 2 years after the date of the enactment of this Act," the law commanded, "the Assistant Secretary shall make the broadband inventory map developed and maintained pursuant to this section accessible by the public on a World Wide Web site of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration [NTIA] in a form that is interactive and searchable."

In the early phases of the map's development, the big concern among reform groups was that too much of its development would be given over to the big ISP-backed nonprofit Connected Nation. One of that outfit's primary concerns was to create a mapping process in which ISPs could "securely submit proprietary deployment data to a nonprofit entity."

The media reform crowd smelled corporate nontransparency. Connected Nation's strategy "is to accept public funds for collecting information from its sponsors which is then kept largely private, hidden behind strict nondisclosure agreements," charged Public Knowledge and a slew of other groups.

When CN affiliates missed receiving the first map grants dispersed in October of 2009, it looked like the NTIA was moving in an independent direction. Not so, New America now insists. The map is too reliant on "self-reported data" by the ISPs, "who often paint their coverage areas with a broad brush." And it combines residential and business ISP packages, which exaggerate how much home broadband service is available in any given region.

"Together, these shortcomings give the impression of a market filled with lots of choices for consumers," the New America duo charge, which isn't the case.

Work-in-progress

Tthe FCC's Rosenberg posted a rebuttal to this critique. His response extolled the open and detailed nature of the map.

"Among other features, the map enables users to access information about broadband offers available locally—including price—by clicking through to providers' websites," he observed. "And anyone can download the National Broadband Map data and generate mash-ups with other data to enhance its usefulness."

We did a review of the site, and have to agree that it is a nice first draft. Among its more notable features, the map allows users to chart available ISP technologies by geographic area. For example, you can create a chart of all Fiber-to-the-home networks across the United States, and then drill down into specific places to see where it's available in your region.

Second, Rosenberg mentioned the FCC is working on an effort to more comprehensively collect data regarding broadband prices and service at the census block level. "As part of this initiative, the FCC has been working with a third party to collect what will likely be the largest and most robust data set on actual broadband performance in history," he promised.

But this was only further grist for New America's complaint mill. More fixes and fewer excuses, Meinrath demanded in a counter-rebuttal. His response noted that the third party in question uses a variety of features backed by New America. "In other words," he noted, "Mr. Rosenberg is pointing at collaborations we set up as a solution to the problems we identified in the first place."

Meinrath's harshest charge is that ISP prices were not directly tracked by the map at the behest of the NTIA's administrator, Larry Strickling, "possibly in response to pressure from Internet Service Providers seeking to keep this information from the public," he says.

"Having worked with Mr. Strickling, we were stunned to hear this. A public commitment from Mr. Strickling addressing the question of how meaningful local-pricing data will be included in the map would go a long way to addressing this allegation."

Ask Lady Gaga

We contacted the NTIA ourselves about that allegation. A spokesperson told us that it is not so, and that NTIA doesn't display price data on the broadband map for other reasons:

First, there is no single price offered by a provider to a given address. Instead, providers offer a variety of prices based on bundled offerings, different speed tiers, and promotional offers. Second, even if you could do an apples-to-apples comparison, the prices gathered six months ago would likely be outdated when we update the map. We agree that current, accurate and meaningful pricing is important to consumers, but we have not yet seen a meaningfully accurate way to depict prices and do not want to confuse consumers with misleading information.

It should be noted that the NTIA isn't the only party to suggest that adding price data represents a challenge. So did municipal broadband advocate Craig Settles shortly after the map was released.

"I expected price information wouldn't be included, and I understand why," Settles wrote. "Even if providers were jumping off a cliff to give you everything they have, providers change pricing more than Lady Gaga changes wardrobes. And pricing can change at the local level depending on who's offering what to which prospect."

Still, his post added that "not having this data is something of a problem. If you're trying to execute broadband adoption strategies and you believe that a barrier to adoption is price, how do you create appropriate tactics when you have no real handle on who's being charged what?"

NTIA also pointed out to us that the stimulus plan authorized "up to" $350 million. That isn't what the map has cost so far. $200 million has been allocated over the next five years, the agency says. The rest has been rerouted to local and statewide broadband projects.

There's quite a lot to chew on in this tussle. The good news is that FCC and NTIA have come through with an open and expandable map of the nation's broadband resources—and they are working with constructively critical groups who want to make the application much more accurate and useful.

This uneasy collaboration could go far. One small suggestion—perhaps words like "boondoggle" should stay out of future public exchanges. They may only give credence to those who thought that the National Broadband Map should never have been developed in the first place.