q: assessing neighborhood level broadband penetration?

[Anthony Townsend]

i'm pondering how one might go about figuring out broadband
penetration rates in small-scale areas - ZIP codes or census tracts -
for a large US city...

the FCC Section 706 reports have time series data on whether
broadband is available in each ZIP code in the country and the # of
carriers offering it - but this is pretty much useless because all
urban ZIP codes have at least 1 carrier and 1 subscriber... there's
no additional detail

the only study im aware of that's tried to crack this nut was done by
the Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago in 2004. they used a
local telecom consultant to do a phone survey of about 2500 small
businesses. this is one option, but a rather costly one.

has anyone seen this type of analysis done elsewhere? what were the
methodologies? are there 3rd party data providers that have this
information?

thanks for any advice....