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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

> So even for my house, with Gigabit service, the FCC report is still grossly overstated. I can't imagine how bad their data in rural areas is.

Is that corruption, incompetence or apathy?

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I'm willing to bet that their reports are entirely based on annual reports submitted by the telecom industry. The FCC probably doesn't have the manpower to do the surveying on it's own (or the funding to create such a task force), so they just ask ISPs to tell them what services are offered and where on an annual basis.

Unfortunately, they probably also lacks the funding to provide an auditor for those reports, and I bet there's no regulation requiring the industry to have an FCC auditor for them.

In other words, Congress doesn't care how accurate the report actually is.

In America corruption is not labeled "corruption" . It is labeled "lobbyism" . It is a legal mean to purchase your politicians. Now it happens to be the telecom industry that historically has been the biggest spenders across industries until Google came along. If you want to fix the sad state of the American political system this is very you should start. Make all contributions over, let say, 100 usd illegal and all contributions should go on public record. I believe it really would be that simple.

All contributions already are on the public record. Voters just don't take the time or interest to study it. Limiting the top amount is already in place in a number of states, and results in complicated legal bundling schemes where people host fundraisers where everyone in attendance signs a contribution card and is basically given the cash to turn back over signed under their name.

There isn't an easy answer.

Contributions are on public record

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lobby_contribs.php

Pretty sure the answer to all of those is yes.

I would go with corruption. I don’t see how it’s in anyone’s personal interest who works at the FCC to have reduced access to internet, and it’s super convenient for everyone, so there must be some side benefit to go out of their way to juice the numbers.

Regulatory capture. The FCC is the agency responsible for oversight of ISPs. They spend less in buying the politicians then implementing regulations.

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