FCC chief Kevin Martin may say the FCC's hands-off policies are helping the broadband market, but the reality is the agency has absolutely no idea how competitive the marketplace is, given their admittedly keystone cops-esque approach to monitoring deployment. They've only recently started to correct their methods, but are getting kickback from The American Cable Association, who insists that actually knowing who has broadband will harm broadband growth.

"Our members are doing the best they can to deploy advanced broadband services as deep as possible into the areas they serve," says ACA president and CEO Matt Polka in a prepared statement on the lobbying group's website. "These additional reporting requirements are nothing but a burden that will slow our members down as they look to expand broadband service in their rural marketplaces."

This is in contrast to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (the NCTA) who has thrown their support behind a new bill that would make 2Mbps the gold standard for broadband connectivity, while shoring up penetration data collection shortcomings. Still, the NCTA took aim at recent OECD data suggesting the United States is in any way falling behind in broadband deployment.

The NCTA, in addition to the fact that their larger cable clients can more easily afford the change, may be aware that improved penetration stats could give their larger cable clients a marketing edge against selective next-gen telco (FiOS, U-Verse) deployment. Phone providers are on a massive push to eliminate franchise agreements -- and subsequently the build-out requirements that forced cable to serve many areas that may not be particularly sexy from a telcoTV ROI perspective.

Still, ISPs large and small haven't liked sharing penetration data that exposes their deployment shortcomings no matter who's asking. Last fall we interviewed the The Center for Public Integrity, a group that's trying to obtain broadband deployment data but is facing serious legal opposition from incumbent providers.