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Broadband isn't Broadband Unless its 2Mbps?

Posted by Zonk on from the time-for-a-bit-of-clarity dept.

quanticle writes "According to House Democrats, broadband isn't broadband unless its at least 2Mbps. The view of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications is that the FCC's data collection standards are hopelessly outdated, and is proposing a number of updates to their criteria. For one, they want 'broadband' reclassified to at least 2mbs, up from 200kbps. Another requirement will change the FCC's outlook on broadband availability. Just because one household in a zip code has broadband access, that will not longer mean everyone in the zip code does. 'The plan went over well with the consumer advocates who appeared before the subcommittee. Larry Cohen, president of the Communication Workers of America, said that the US is "stuck with a twentieth century Internet" and that he would support increasing the "broadband" definition to 2Mbps. Ben Scott of Free Press echoed that sentiment, suggesting that the definition needs to be an evolving standard that increases over time, which is in contrast to the current FCC definition; it has not changed in nine years. "We have always been limited by the FCC's inadequate and flawed data," he said.'"

4 of 351 comments (clear)

  1. Korea has 10MBPs to the home... by athloi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Let's aim high. In the future, it is likely many individuals will run media servers, VPN in to home, download a ton of video and use services like VOIP that rely on quality bandwidth. Instead of going piecemeal into this future, let's design for the next fifty years, roll out the hardware, and enjoy a nice long depreciation curve. It will be cheaper in the long run...

    --
    technical writing / development
    1. Re:Korea has 10MBPs to the home... by odoketa · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And France has 20MB symmetric. The numbers are somewhat irrelevant when you start talking about orders of magnitude. The fact is that the US is behind in ways that are staggering, and it's hurting us economically. How many more small businesses would buy a server if they could actually get the pipe to host their own apps? How much more software/multimedia would be sold if it came in seconds, instead of hours.

      At least in France, many of the problems were solved by local loop unbundling. I imagine the same would work here.

  2. Re:Forgive me by EMeta · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While I completely agree with your sentiment, it does grate on me a bit that 'close to an election year' is 6 months since the last election, and just 4 since the new congress came in. It feels like when they have Christmas displays up in September, except probably closer in analogy if they had them in April.

  3. "Up to" should be considered deceptive advertising by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What we need is an FTC rule that advertising any service quality or quantity with the words "up to" or substantially similar language is, by law, considered deceptive. Advertising should have to specify a guaranteed level of service. That would put cable and DSL on the same measurement scale, discourage underprovisioning, and make cellular data transfer rates in ads something you could rely on.

    There's precedent for this. At various times in the past, the FTC had to tighten up the definition of "horsepower" for cars and "watts" for audio gear.