End of data updates?

In order to update my Spectrum Map, I use data from the FCC Spectrum Dashboard (its helpful CSV export functions). Unfortunately, we’ve gone two months now where the FCC hasn’t updated it. And I don’t know if they will resume them.

If I want to keep the Spectrum Mapper going, I’ll have to figure out a way to get at the same sort of FCC data I had before. Raw license data is easy (kind of) – they have a way to download the entire license database into a 10GB text file (1GB ZIP file). I have a python script already that will go through and pull out all the cellular license data. But the issue from there is it doesn’t come with population-specific information on geographically disaggregated licenses (when two or more companies split a geographic area into smaller parts) and no county-level data (which is what I was using as the basis in my system). The FCC ULS has county level data, but I don’t feel comfortable screen scraping the FCC’s website, lest they call it “unauthorized access” and threaten to throw me in jail for 30 years like Aaron Schwartz.

So for now I’m stuck. Even if I figured out a solution, I cant do much until May anyways, since my weekends are spent writing papers.