For any given community, it is not hard to understand what services are available in a community or part of a community with a few of the right people in the room. That would be a couple power users, the computer sales/service/networking guy and a realtor.

Your (few) competitors know where you offer service already.

The question is whether these maps offer a value to policymakers in the attempt to make sure everyone has fast, affordable access to the most important utility of the 21st century. But the idea that your competitors don’t already have this information (on a block by block level) is fairly silly. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult for a person to collect this information – it just takes time.

Time means money and the state doesn’t want to pay that money so they instead have to ask the providers themselves who pretend it would be a great loss if their competitors knew what they all already know. So instead we waited a year for unhelpful maps. Possibly the worst of all worlds. Wonderful.

You can’t tell me that disclosing to competitors (existing or potential) the layout, design, and foot by foot coverage of the single most important asset we have as a service provider is going to help us remain competitive as a business.

If I cannot see the layers of the map that show me where DSL, cable modem, fixed wireless, fiber-based high speed Internet is delivered, it is not of much use to me as a community technology planner.

If Mediacom is competing in a market with FTTP, I cannot tell if Mediacom provides service. Mediacom might even be providing a higher data rate over its fiber coax than the phone company is providing over fiber and I could not tell that. Again, we need to see the layers to get value.

In fact, I suspect others that are trying to create such maps would be interested too.

If you’re looking for actual data about cable operators in small towns, why not ask the small town operators themselves?

Just a thought.

-Zach

Good comments.
As you know, finding information on upload speeds can be difficult. Plus you can only put so much information into little boxes!
Do you have any data about cable television in towns of under 1,000 people? My experience tells me that if a town is over 750 people, they are likely to have cable. I do not know about towns smaller than that.

I think that is a good way of presenting that data, though I would encourage some thumbnail estimates for upload speeds as well as download. For cable in towns and countryside, I would highlight none also as MN ranks high among states with large areas offering no cable service.