Ars Technica just published an article (CPI suing FCC to get at real state of broadband competition in the US) about the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and their struggles to gain access to raw data collected by the FCC.

The FCC collects information from every telecom company in the US; they give the agency data on each company’s line deployments, broken down by ZIP code. The FCC reports on this data but the results have been questioned by several, including last year by the General Accounting Office.

It is an interesting case that brings to the fore two issues that go hand in hand: Freedom of Information and equal access to broadband technology.