FCC Officially Approves Change In the Definition of Broadband

halfEvilTech writes As part of its 2015 Broadband Progress Report, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to change the definition of broadband by raising the minimum download speeds needed from 4Mbps to 25Mbps, and the minimum upload speed from 1Mbps to 3Mbps, which effectively triples the number of U.S. households without broadband access. Currently, 6.3 percent of U.S. households don't have access to broadband under the previous 4Mpbs/1Mbps threshold, while another 13.1 percent don't have access to broadband under the new 25Mbps downstream threshold.

Comments

What are the practical results of this?

[Great Big Bird]

What are the practical results of this?

Re:What are the practical results of this?

[zlives]

verizon can no longer milk the broadband tax incentive cow to quite the degree that it was.

Re:What are the practical results of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Subsidies for deploying "broadband" to rural areas (like mine) are going to be yanked since they actually have to have some actual bandwidth now.

Re:What are the practical results of this?

[MickyTheIdiot]

This is why common carrier status should come in. Not providing good Internet to rural areas basically allows local providers to choose who wins and who loses when it comes to business. There are few businesses that can operate without good Internet connections now, and that number is sure to decrease.

Re:What are the practical results of this?

[mrchaotica]

There are more than two parties. The trick is that you have to care about them at the local level first in order for them to become relevant at the national level later.

Re:Still not good enough.

[Tablizer]

It is true those countries are more compact, making economies of scale easier, BUT even well-populated areas of the US still have limited, unreliable, and gimmick-heavy choices. I'm one. Thus, population density is not the full reason. We are doing something wrong in the US.

It looks and smells like oligopoly-based crony-capitalism controlling the strings, but you are welcome to present alternative explanations.

Re:Still not good enough.

[Archangel Michael]

Or, you can realize that Broadband is as simple as building out a new Fiber infrastructure, replacing Cable, using the model I've suggested.

Municipalities build out the infrastructure using one time Bond money, building a CO-LO facility and auction space to CONTENT and INTERNET providers. All last mile connections terminate in the CO-LO and a network technician processes connection requests from customers, "I want Time-Warner" or "I want Comcast", or "I want Google", who then patches customer to provider.

The cable is not owned by any single vendor, and there is competition for customers individually. No need for any regulation, and market forces will lower costs to the end user. AND things like the Comcast/Netflix argument simply disappears.