ISP Lobbying Group: What Rural Broadband Problem? - Move along folks, there's nothing to see here...

Those of you in rural America who can't get broadband have simply miscalculated, according to the US Internet Industry Association, a Washington lobbying organization for ISPs and Internet industry. "The accepted political dogma that America has in some way failed in its efforts to deploy broadband is based on a series of miscalculations," insists USIAA CEO David McClure in a new report. Chock full of industry think-tank science, the report seems little more than an effort to blow smoke up consumers' collective ethernet ports:

Certainly, there is still work to be done in closing the digital divides in America. Equally clearly, however, this work should be based not on continuing efforts to pursue such unhelpful policies as open access, common carriage laws for broadband networks, municipal networking or network neutrality legislation.

Yes. Who wants application and device-agnostic networks and cities and towns allowed to run their own broadband? Crazy people -- That's who. And rural users who thought they couldn't get broadband because ISPs deem vast stretches of rural America unprofitable (and successfully lobby to ban those towns from deploying broadband themselves)? You apparently just need to go back and check your math.

The accepted political dogma that America has in some way failed in its efforts to deploy broadband is based on a series of miscalculations.

-USIIA CEO David McClure

The report insists that a lack of broadband isn't the ISPs fault as much as it is that people are, well, poor. The group throws their weight behind the already dubious Connected Nation model, a group that's been recently criticized as an incumbent lobbying group dressed up as a rural broadband mapping & deployment project.

Reading the report this morning while nursing a head cold got us thinking. How about this as the first step in the development of a real, useful national broadband policy: Stop letting industry lobbyists and marketing departments pretend they produce useful "science."

It's also time to extinguish the fallacy that lobbyists, paid to have only one, permanently static viewpoint, are interested in having a legitimate discussion on broadband deployment, network neutrality, or any other topic. Does a television commercial ever see the flaws in its arguments and change its position? Do open forums with said television commercials produce substantive change?

The goal is profit, not philanthropy, and data is manipulated and twisted until it serves that singular, unwavering goal. This is not objective analysis. It is not science. It is advertising. Can you have a debate with advertising? Sure. But we're tired of trying and life is too short.

Every time we de-construct the skewed data and farmed science in lobbyist reports, the same false arguments re-appear the next month. It's like playing whack-a-mole with a financially-conflicted R2-D2. So instead of wasting our time: If you want to see if rural America has a broadband problem, ask the people who live there -- not the lobbyists trying to convince lawmakers that the problem doesn't exist and/or isn't their fault.

For those who think rural broadband coverage gaps are a "miscalculation," our users will be happy to provide tours.