FCC Broadband Standards Need a Reboot

← Are Wi-Fi Hot Spots the New Pay Phone Booths? Are Rural Communities Saying Forget It to Broadband? →

March 26th, 2008

The Federal Communications Commission recently released a report that shows high-speed Internet access has risen 22 percent and penetrates 99 percent of the zip codes in the United States. However, those statistics come with two significant caveats: the FCC defines "high speed" as 200 Kbps and any zip code with at least one such "high speed" connection is considered penetrated.

It's promising to see access continue to proliferate the United States, but these statistics don't show that the crossing of the digital divide is upon us.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said that the commission is planning to recategorize its definition of high-speed access by breaking services into tiers. The lower-end categories would be split into six smaller tiers: 200 to 768 Kbps at the low end, 768Kbps to 1.5 Mbps for "basic" service, 1.5 to 3 Mbps for "high speed" service, 3 to 6 Mbps for "robust" service, and a 6 to 10 Mbps for "premium" service.

I've written a little about defining high-speed services here in the past. I don't see the need to define what high speed is because the definition of high speed -- like the broadband industry itself -- is dynamic. Megabit-per-second service will be replaced by gigabit-per-second service and terabit-per-second will eventually replace that and then petabit to exabit to whatever frontiers that lie beyond. There are no limits and no need for bureaucratic boundaries.

The FCC needs to get with the 21st century with its idea of high speed, yes, but it doesn't need to put a definition in writing. Instead, the commission should spend its ink on drafting a definite broadband policy that lifts the United States to the level of the leaders in Asia and Europe.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

3 Comments

The FCC should define broad band that is what they get paid to do! They set the rules and foundation for industry to work from. But why can't the rules be future proof. Instead of (low end, basic, high speed, robust and premium) they should look at a simplified number scheme. 0 < 200Kbps, 1 > 200Kbps, 2 > 750Kbps, 3 > 1.5Mbps, 4 > 3Mbps, 5 > 6Mbps and so on. This would give the consumer and service provider a simple scale (non technical) that could be used to determine if the services they are looking for can be supplied with the bandwidth they have available.

The other key attribute is that any broad band must be "always on".

As far as comparing ourselves to Asia and Europe forget it. You might as well compare apples and oranges. The subscriber density is so extremely different that direct comparisons of dense Asia and Europe cities to the US urban sprawl just can't be fair or worth wile.

March 26th, 2008 // By Barry

What is missing in any definition, especially with the direction the market is going, demanding more return path or upload speeds to share audio, Video and gaming action is the Upload speed. Anyone can deliver robust downloads. It si when they combine this with equally robust upload is when we get a real measurement.
Broadband Defined:
Minimum Download needs to start at 2Mbps
Minimum Upload needs to start at 1Mbps.
Anything below that needs to be defined as Narrowband.

April 2nd, 2008 // By Jim

With a hat tip to PacketFront for the definition, "broadband is whatever bandwidth you need to do whatever it is you need to do."

At least the FCC is changing the definition, but they continue to set the bar entirely too low, and it makes it appear that they are modifying the definition to meet the incumbent definition of broadband, rather than really looking at market needs.

April 9th, 2008 // By Andrew

Leave a Comment

  _____    __      ___     __     _____   ____  
 |  ___|  / /_    / _ \   / /_   |___  | |  _ \ 
 | |_    | '_ \  | (_) | | '_ \     / /  | | | |
 |  _|   | (_) |  \__, | | (_) |   / /   | |_| |
 |_|      \___/     /_/   \___/   /_/    |____/
Please type the letters and numbers you see above in the field below: