FCC ISP Speed Test Report to Stick With Processes From First Two, Johnston Says
As the FCC’s Broadband Measurement Group met Wednesday to plan the production of their next annual broadband speed measurement report, the commission made clear the group will produce the next report under the same data collection process that was used the first two times. “We have some disputes, some issues, between the people here in terms of the process and the policies,” said Walter Johnston, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology’s Electromagnetic Compatibility Division. “We're not going to let that get in the way of the next report,” he said.
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The ISPs and other participants in the group “agreed that since we've been doing this for two reports now and we have a process that people have bought into, that we're going to maintain that process through the next report,” Johnston told the meeting at FCC headquarters. Other meetings have been characterized by what some participants called a breach of trust. The reports measure how well ISPs do at meeting or exceeding the transmission speeds they advertise.
ISPs working with the FCC on the program were concerned about the FCC’s introduction of a formalized “Principles for Open Measurements,” during a July 25 meeting with stakeholders. ISP representatives who spoke with us had questioned whether it was valuable to implement formalized principles at this point in the program (CD Aug 6 p5). It was not clear whether Johnston’s remarks were specifically in reference to the ISP concerns.
Johnston wants the next report done on time, he said. “We wanted to ensure that we had, at least for the next report, kept on schedule,” Johnston said. “It was very helpful to understand from all parties that producing the report was very important. And hopefully on the issues that have been raised over time, we can reach a consensus."
Measurement for the next report is to begin at the start of September, Johnston said. The FCC said it chose the starting month so measurement would not be immediately affected by the holiday season, he said. The FCC presented three proposals to improve the process based on issues that cropped up during production of the last report. Those proposals included a new data loss policy that allows the group to measure broadband speed within a specific month with up to seven days of lost data.
In April, during production of the last report, there was a loss of six days'-worth of data, Johnston said. The FCC determined that they could tolerate a loss of up to seven days, he said. When there is a data loss exceeding seven days, the FCC will pick up additional days from the next month in order to make up the difference, Johnston said. Another proposal governed a non-disclosure agreement on access to ISP data that allows for limited access to the data for the purpose of network diagnostics. That data would still be covered by the FCC’s policy on data publication, Johnston said.