[russell_h]

This thing is so broken its not even funny. I tried it when it first came out and not a single one of the wired providers it listed will actually serve my address. The two that actually do serve my address weren't mentioned anywhere. Now when I search my address it doesn't show anything at all.

I'm glad we spent $200 million on that.

[rbranson]

What you're looking at is probably all of the TIGER city blocks bounced against various zip code or county lists that the telecom companies provide. That's why if, for instance, AT&T has ANY U-verse coverage in your area, you will likely be flagged as receiving U-verse, even without being able to subscribe to it.

So I can say with pretty high certainty that the reason this sucks is because of the telecom lobby. There is an enormous amount of pressure on regulators to not require the telecom companies to disclose detailed information about where they provide what levels of service. Even information that's retrievable by going to their site and checking for coverage and/or service availability at an address. They most certainly have this information, but it's considered one of their most closely guarded trade secrets.

Those at the NTIA (and FCC to a degree) seem to be mostly interested in figuring out the minimum amount of disclosure they can give to meet the law-mandated requirements. This is the same old problem in Washington where the people who end up regulating are those that were plucked right out of highly-networked positions in the industry they regulate.

[stinkytaco]

It did OK for my street. It wasn't missing anything that I was aware of but some of the speeds were incorrect (I get 10 Mbps from a provider it listed as only offering 1.5). Overall a valuable tool that needs improvement. I think 200 million is a pretty good deal considering the volume of data it promises to handle.

[joeybaker]

It gets the providers right, but completely and utterly misses on the speed estimations.

[Natsu]

I believe it goes by maximum advertised speeds.

As you might imagine, there are plenty of reasons why that would be out of touch with reality.

[amalcon]

My speed estimates for wired providers were both about an order of magnitude high.