The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, but when it comes to the nation's broadband infrastructure, incumbent operators, their lobbyists and public relations departments have consistently stated that everything is just fine. This contradicts data from organizations like the OECD, which notes that the United States is sixteenth in broadband penetration, and twenty-first in price paid per megabyte. It also contradicts data from union groups like the CWA, who recently noted the average U.S. upstream speed is just 435kbps. Verizon's solution, judging from a Verizon blog post, is to quote Mark Twain:Of course it's unlikely that the PR men at the Verizon blog would accept data from any source unless it showed what they want it to show: that competition is raging and deployment is robust. As Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOM notes, Verizon could go a long way toward clearing up any confusion by releasing their own broadband data, instead of fighting people in court interested in mapping American broadband.

This is a company that has spent a better part of the last decade trying to hide broadband infrastructure shortcomings from American consumers. They also just got done passing legislation in more than a dozen states that redefined the video franchise system so they wouldn't have to deploy next-gen broadband to rural Americans. Avoiding (or selling) low ROI deployment areas is of course in the best interest of the company and its shareholders, but the feigned concern about even broadband coverage is pouring it on a little thick, guys.