4Mbps Still The Standard For One Govt Broadband Grant Program (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader cites an Ars Technica report: Four U.S. senators say that the Internet speed standard for a government grant program shouldn't be stuck at 4Mbps. The Community Connect program run by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) funds broadband deployment in rural communities, but it uses a speed standard of just 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream. Even that speed is an increase over the 3Mbps (download and upload combined) standard the program used until just a few weeks ago. US Senators Angus King (I-Maine), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) say that the USDA didn't raise the standard high enough. In a letter last week to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, the senators questioned the decision to set the grant program's speed threshold below the 10Mbps/1Mbps standard used by a separate USDA loan program. "Earlier this month, USDA upped broadband speed requirements for the Broadband Access Loan Program to 10Mbps, while Community Connect was only upped to 4Mbps," the senators noted. "In order to maintain the programs' relevance in an age of rapidly increasing demand for bandwidth, we strongly urge you to consider updating their broadband speed definitions, particularly the Community Connect Program's Minimum Broadband Service benchmark."

Comments

Re:4Mbps just is not enough!

[DarkOx]

Except that multiple satellite and fixed cellular providers have done exactly that. I typing this from my home network bridged to my Verizaon CANTENNA right now.

  I get about 4/4MBps in most conditions, severe storms slow things down. Latency is pretty low most of the time around 90-100ms to most well connected sites like google.com.

Most people have exactly ZERO need for more than that. Sure I might enjoy that 75mbit comcast service I keep reading about for streaming netflix 24-7 but that is about the only thing I can't do with my rural internet service. I work from home in doing "IT work". So I am hardly being cut off from any economic opportunities because better connectivity isn't available.

  The USDA absolutely should not be subsidizing broadband! Holy scope creep batman! This is why the federal government costs so damn much. We already have other federal agencies who likely have the talent in house to mange such a program, FCC, and Commerce spring to mind. How many people are duplicated so the department of Agriculture can run a digital broadband program?

The biggest problem with budget sequestration is it did not go nearly far enough. The biggest problem with this program is not how it defines broadband but that it exists!