If you didn't know, the FCC is pretty cozy with the nation's largest phone companies, rarely meeting a merger or baby bell proposal they don't like, and generally working hard to protect baby bell revenue ahead of consumer interests. In their latest gift to the nation's largest phone companies, the FCC on Friday, against the will of consumer advocates, is expected to stop gathering information from AT&T concerning service quality, customer satisfaction and infrastructure investment.

According to the Wall Street Journal, similar proposals from Qwest and Verizon should be accepted soon. An AT&T spokesman tells the journal the company wants to "eliminate reporting requirements that are no longer necessary or [are] redundant," while consumer advocates argue that the data is helpful in painting a picture concerning service shortcomings. Smaller phone companies say they also find the data helpful. From the Journal:However, in FCC parlance, "improving" something generally means a decade of intentional bureaucratic gridlock, the beneficiaries of which is usually the baby bells. This is, after all, an agency that has (some would argue intentionally) taken a decade to figure out that mapping broadband penetration in the United States is probably a good idea. Maybe you'll see improved service quality data collection, maybe you won't.