Related side-note. The wife of one of our installers just got hired on as a census worker. She got a handheld terminal (can't remember the name brand) with fingerprint recognition, built-in GPS capabilities, etc. Will be interesting to see what the next census data set looks like.
Randy Matt Larsen - Lists wrote: > I thought I would share this email that I just sent to the FCC regarding > the Form 477 report. I am late filing this report because we don't have > accurate data and thought that my reasons why were worth sharing with my > colleagues. I support what the FCC is trying to do with Form477, but was > not able to in good conscience turn in our data by the report deadline. > > I hope that this is valuable to some of you out there. > > Matt Larsen > vistabeam.com > > --- > > Hi Suzanne, > > I am not really in a position where I can give a projected date to have > this information completed for you. However, I do feel it would be > valuable to explain why and provide you and your management some more > information as to why I am unable to give you a better date on when we > intend to have it completed. > > For background, Vistabeam (Inventive Wireless of Nebraska) is a wireless > ISP that covers about 40,000 square miles in Nebraska and Wyoming. We > have around 2000 customers spread out across this very thinly populated > area. Even though we are quite small in customer number compared to > other ISPs, we have a very good billing and provisioning system and > quite a bit of detail on our customers. However, we did not have census > tract information for our customers as there had never been a need for > it until the latest Form477 notice came out earlier this year. > > Once we received the Form477 notice, we made plans to modify our billing > system to add the census tract information, which we were successful in > doing. We also studied how to obtain geocoding information from multiple > sources and how to integrate this into our database so that we could > complete the report. Our initial integration seemed to be successful > until we started to look at the geocoding data that we received and > realized that over 50% of the census tract information was invalid. > > After going through this data, we found that many of the addresses we > have for customers are simply not being processed and located correctly. > The majority of our customers are in rural areas with references to “CR” > and “Road xxx” and other rural address forms that the geocoding engines > simply cannot process. Many of these rural counties do not have GIS > departments with the ability to provide the geocoding information for > these addresses. In the event that the address doesn’t code, the > geocoding engine returns the census tract information for the nearest > Post Office, which is not in the correct census tract. > > To get the correct information, we basically have two options. > > Option #1 is to drive out to every customer with a GPS unit and record > the information into our system. Since we have approximately 1100 > customers with inaccurate information, this is going to be a time > consuming process and would cost us several thousand dollars to collect > – not to mention the lost man hours. > > Option #2 is to go through each customer record and use Google Earth and > the driving directions to each customer location to determine the census > tract. This takes about five minutes per customer record, so we are > looking at about 92 man hours to get that data assembled and inserted > into our customer database. > > We have chosen to go with Option #2 to collect the invalid census tract > data. However, I do not have the manpower to devote dedicated time to > this data collection so we have distributed this project among several > employees and are making as much progress as we can when our workflow > allows for it. After a month, we are about 10% of the way through it. We > are now entering our slower time of the year, so hopefully we will make > a little bit better progress on it going forward, but I cannot make any > guarantees on when we will get the data completed. > > This leaves me with a quandary – I can either provide you with timely, > but inaccurate information that is going to skew your data, or I can > take the time to get the information right. Unfortunately, 99% of the > completed Form477 reports that you have received probably have a > substantial amount of inaccurate data in them. > > II can send the inaccurate data that we have, and then you can check us > off the list. That is probably what we will end up doing. In reality, we > probably won’t have a truly accurate report until the next one is due. > > I would be happy to provide a computer, Internet connection and a quiet > room for an FCC intern if you would like to send someone out to > participate in the data collection process. I realize that this is not a > likely possibility, but I figured it doesn’t hurt to make the offer. > > I really do appreciate the thought process behind collecting this > information. I am one of the founding members and past president of > WISPA, the Wireless ISP trade association, and we have actively > encouraged our members to complete this report and comply with FCC > regulations regarding our industry. I want to comply with the data > reporting requirements of the Form477 report and will commit as much of > my available resources as I can to get the data requested and make sure > that it is as accurate as possible. > > Thank you for your time and consideration, > > Matt Larsen > > Vistabeam.com > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ > -- Randy Cosby Vice President InfoWest, Inc work: 435-773-6071 email: rco...@infowest.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/randycosby -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! 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