CPI suing FCC to get at real state of broadband competition in the US at Ars Technica.

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) wants to find out exactly how competitive the US broadband market is. To do that, it needs access to the raw data collected by the FCC, but the agency has refused to turn it over on the grounds that it could give a competitive advantage to other companies.

The data is from Form 477 filings and list each company's line deployments by zip code. This type of data would be immensely useful for crunching out various reports on broadband deployment around the US. The current FCC reports don't share much and consider broadband to start at 200 kbps. Ack.