Note: Towards Community-Empowered Network Data Action

Abstract

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently released official technical requirements for its Broadband Data Collection (BDC) processes, with the purpose of improving the accuracy of broadband coverage data in the United States. A key process in the BDC establishes the opportunity for communities to crowdsource Internet measurements that may dispute coverage data maintained by Internet service providers. This process outlines complex requirements that may provide a substantial barrier to community participation. In this poster we share the design of a network measurement tool suite and the requirements for a community coordination tool to support community-led efforts to challenge official reports. Our design is based on “counter-data action” principles, which call unethical and authoritative uses of data into question.