As long as government officials have been talking about how to boost broadband deployment and adoption, outlining proposals to bridge the digital divide and build out a world-class broadband infrastructure, a key ingredient has been missing: data.
That’s a shortfall the administration hopes to overcome with today’s release of a long-awaited nationwide map outlining the speeds and availability of broadband service.
The map, which was authorized by an act of Congress in 2008, and then funded in the 2009 economic stimulus bill, is the product of data submitted by all 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia. All told, the interactive map counts more than 25 million searchable data points submitted by more than 1,600 service providers.
What’s more, the Commerce Department and Federal Communications Commission, which collaborated on the project, are inviting developers to build applications on top of the data with more than 30 APIs.
In addition, officials released a new survey on broadband adoption, indicating that more households are subscribing to broadband service, but that at-risk segments of the population are still lagging behind.
Datamation takes a look.