The BITAG (Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group) is working on a new paper to document a voluntary specification for machine-readable broadband labels (required by the FCC in October 2024). (Note: Your organization does not need to “join” BITAG in a formal sense, and the papers say explicitly that your technical participation does not mean your organization endorses the findings.)
These are papers that usually run 20 – 25 pages total and are produced via rough consensus, targeting policymakers, lawmakers, regulators, and other non-technical audiences (see recent paper on latency).
We collaborate via GitHub using a markdown document and have a short weekly call. I don’t think it’s a huge amount of work since there are usually many active contributors of text and most work can be performed completely asynchronously (some past contributors who are outside of North America have done most or all work asynchronously).
Explain the FCC BB label rulemaking, the October 2024 deadline, etc.
Easier for providers, better for consumers and researchers, lower cost for the FCC, etc.
Explore pros and cons of XML, CSV, other formats.
Explore formatting of file name.
Field types, values for fields, etc.
4/19/24 - Kick-off call
Phase 2 (approx 2.5 months) - Review Outline, start volunteering to write text, write. (Ending July 1, 2024)
Phase 3 - Publish!