[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.