Abstract

There is a paucity of granular, high-resolution broadband data in the United States, which limits the prospects of informed telecommunications policy debates. In the absence of regulation requiring telecommunication providers to accurately report service footprints, pricing, and service quality data, providers refuse to disclose this information, routinely citing competition as the primary reason for keeping network and pricing data obfuscated. In addition, many secondary datasets needed for broadband planning and policy research, such as parcel or address point data, are equally challenging to gather. These datasets are often controlled by county governments, with no overarching access policy, resulting in neighboring counties with widely divergent policies for the release of these important data. In this article we explore the challenges of open data and its impacts on telecommunication policy development. A recent project which explored the spatial provision of Google Fiber in the Kansas City metropolitan area helps to highlight these difficulties. Basic strategies for mitigating information asymmetries and the lack of data transparency for telecommunication policy analysis are discussed.

摘要

在美国，缺乏精细的高分辨率宽带数据，这限制了知情的电信政策辩论的前景。在没有要求电信提供商准确报告服务覆盖范围，价格和服务质量数据的法规的情况下，提供商通常拒绝公开此信息，通常将竞争作为保持网络和价格数据混淆的主要原因。此外，宽带规划和政策研究所需的许多辅助数据集（例如包裹或地址点数据）同样具有挑战性。这些数据集通常由县政府控制，没有总体访问策略，导致相邻县对这些重要数据的发布具有广泛分歧的策略。在本文中，我们探讨了开放数据的挑战及其对电信政策制定的影响。最近的一个项目探索了堪萨斯城市区的Google Fiber的空间供应，有助于凸显这些困难。讨论了减轻信息不对称性和电信政策分析缺乏数据透明性的基本策略。