United States gets a National Broadband Map, finds much of its nation doesn't have broadband

The FCC of the Obama administration has been very keen to highlight the fact that many Americans today still aren't riding the information superhighway, a mission of awareness-spreading that was advanced a little more yesterday with the introduction of the National Broadband Map. Mostly the work of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, this $200 million project provides broadband data for thousands of providers with over 25 million searchable records -- all of which can be visualized in map form, categorized by connectivity type, or downloaded in full to your computer. APIs have been made available for anyone interested in remixing / using the NBM elsewhere, while information updates are promised every six months. In terms of the maps' content, we're still seeing unsatisfactorily wide swathes of broadband-free countryside, but we suppose the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one.