Fast Net News, DSL Prime, DOCSIS Report

The FCC and NTIA have done a remarkable job making most of the data available, whether you're a consumer just looking for your neighborhood or an analyst extracting trends. At broadbandmap.gov, you can see your county, state, metropolitan areas or even local census tract. Just input your address. You can add demographic data for analysis. You can get answers on a map or a web page. You can download the data in several common formats, including to take right into a spreadsheet. You can even send it via Facebook, Twitter and more. 

I extracted a state-by-state chart which is turning out to be interesting. http://bit.ly/fRAvNE

The overall project is a model of how to present data. They offer three dozen "RESTful" APIs at http://www.broadbandmap.gov/developer so you can extract almost anything you want. The raw dataset has 25,000,000 records and you can download the whole thing if you want it. Michael Bryne of the FCC was very proud they had done all the work with open source tools. Everything is running on Wordpress. Computech deserves kudos for the programming.

If only the politicians weren't spinning the conclusions.