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"The FCC's failure to disclose that information to consumers raises

Jan. 18, 2017 by Kimberly Parks

"The FCC's failure to disclose that information to consumers raises serious concerns about the Commission's oversight of our telecom policy," the group said. "The FCC has a long history of providing information to consumers about how it operates, but the agency's failure to provide it to consumers raises serious questions about its ability to regulate broadband. It's time for a better future for the FCC and the United States."

The FCC does not, however, share any of the concerns raised by the Free Press.

"We expect the FCC to be cooperative with consumers in developing its broadband policy and to work closely with the other federal agencies and other stakeholders to address our concerns as they come to light," the agency said in an Oct. 21 news release.

"The FCC has engaged with our advocacy groups and other government entities concerned with broadband issues to ensure that they are prepared to participate in the Commission's public comment process on our broadband policy initiatives," the agency added.

As we pointed out in a June 2016 blog post, the FCC also did not provide broadband data to consumers of any of its other big Internet service providers such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. As a result, data from those two providers is not included in FCC broadband data.

"We have learned that these companies, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint, have taken steps to remove their advertising from broadband Internet access areas by removing the 'net neutrality' (net neutrality) rules and by removing their FCC-wide policy, which regulates the use of broadband Internet access services and has been widely adopted by major U.S. telecommunications companies," Verizon spokesperson Patrick Lynch told Ars.

This is the first time in a long while that data from those two providers has been included in broadband data. And the FCC says that only the last four years of its broadband policy have been subject to such a data request.

"We have received the following data requests from a number of online news and information sources, including a number of news organizations, newspapers and cable news channels," a FCC spokesman told Ars. "All of these requests include some data provided by those same media sources."

The spokesman added that the FCC uses the "reasonable authority" granted to it to "protect the public," not "the private interests of the ISPs."

This is a problem even if that authority is not actually exercised by the Federal Communications Commission. As we pointed out in a blog post in September, the FTC can act by "disclosing broadband information and