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Imperfect or absent data are are rarely mentioned in policy discussions. Yet the communications
policy debate in the United States today is inseparable from debates about the data used to make claims about policy propositions. President Bush articulated in 2004 a goal to have universal and
affordable broadband available in the United States by 2007. The way data are collected by
government agencies cannot answer questions about whether that goal has been met or not.
International organizations – using the imperfect data – report that the United States’ ranking in
per capita broadband adoption is lower today than it was a few years ago. Written by Kenneth Flamm, Amy Friedlander, John Horrigan, and William Lehr, this paper argues that the country cannot properly gauge its own progress or know how dire America’s international standing is without good data about broadband adoption, deployment, price, and quality.
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