I wanted to get this post out before we close up shop for a small business-related trip. We’re taking off to study social networking issues in a beloved southern European country noted for its incredible contributions to art, culture, food, and civilization as we know it. We’ll be back on October 10.
To the matter at hand … mapping FCC competitive data. I had been looking for a better way to show and share this regulatory agency’s “477” records on ISP competition. I then discovered the potent Google Maps Data APIs, which let you send and receive geo data as a feed. With access to the feed and using Google mapping software, data can be viewed, analyzed, and even updated by large distributed groups. It’s really an amazing tool.
So with a little bit of effort I loaded competitive ISP data for suburban NJ into a shared Google Map. I’ve conveniently embedded it into this post.
I was hoping to include even more information on broadband speeds using the FCC’s new web services APIs for pulling in average upload and download rates based on longitude and latitude coordinates. For a day or two I was swallowed up in a “cross domain” beast that prevented me from making a few relatively straightforward Javascript calls. I’ll get that speed data in by other means.
Below is one of the maps I created for a suburban swath near where I live. Hover over an area, and then click to bring up a placemark. You’ll see the number of ISPs (both business and consumer) for that zip. Darker colors imply less competition, lighter more. Enjoy.
You can find more maps on ISP competition in suburban Jersey here.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Visualizing Broadband Competition (technoverseblog.com)
- FCC opens up ‘white spaces’ for broadband (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Consumer Broadband Test API (fcc.gov)
- Google Maps Data API (google.com)
