FCC Redefines Broadband As 25 Mbps, Angering Broadband Industry Perfectly Happy With Previous, Pathetic Standard
from the stop-whining-and-get-to-work dept
For a few months now, the FCC has been hinting that it was preparing to raise the base definition of broadband, and now it has officially made it happen. Voting 3-2 along party lines (because having goals is a partisan issue, you know), the agency declared that we're officially raising the standard definition of broadband from 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up to 25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up. That means, with the flip of a pdf announcement (pdf), millions of you technically no longer have broadband. In fact, with the FCC's decision the number of unserved broadband households has jumped from around 6% to somewhere around 20%.That's largely thanks to the millions of users stuck on last-generation DSL in markets where phone companies lack the competitive incentive to upgrade. Placing greater attention on cable's growing broadband monopoly as AT&T and Verizon back away from unwanted DSL markets (to focus on wireless) was part of the agency's goal. Not only do these companies not want to upgrade these DSL lines, they're paying for state laws that ensure nobody else can either. It's a paradigm that's needed smashing for most of the last decade, and few thought that Wheeler, a former cable and wireless lobbyist, was going to be the one to do it.
Wheeler's gathering ammunition as he heads into a contentious fight over net neutrality and municipal broadband next month. As mandated by Congress, the FCC is required to ensure that broadband is being deployed in a "reasonable and timely" basis. As numerous studies the last few months have shown, the lack of any competition at faster speeds is a pretty clear indication that's not happening. In fact, as the FCC has repeatedly noted, three quarters of homes lack the choice of more than one ISP at speeds of 25 Mbps or above. Despite all the hype about 1 Gbps, just 3% have access to such speeds.
Not too surprisingly, the FCC's moves have upset a broadband industry that's been perfectly happy with the standards bar being set at ankle height. Just as it did when the FCC raised the definition from 200 kbps to 768 kbps in 2008, and again from 786kbps to 4 mbps in 2010, the broadband industry is complaining that the latest definition simply isn't fair. The NCTA was quick to issue a statement calling the 25 Mbps arbitrary and claiming it paints an "inaccurate" picture of the broadband market. TechFreedom similarly declared the FCC's bar raising to be the very worst sort of villainy:
This is cover for reckless, ideologically-driven regulatory agenda that would SLOW the investment needed to drive speed upgrades #FCCLive
— TechFreedom (@TechFreedom) January 29, 2015
Dissenting Republic Commissioners Ajit Pai (a former Verizon regulatory lawyer) and Mike O'Reilly were similarly outraged by the higher bar. In fact, it was O'Reilly that offered up the most convoluted, ridiculous defense of the status quo all day:
"Taking his argument against changing the broadband standard into deep space, FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said "the report notes that 4K TV requires 25Mbps, but 4K TV is still relatively new and is not expected to be widely adopted for years to come. While the statute directs us to look at advanced capability, this stretches the concept to an untenable extreme. Some people, for example, believe probably incorrectly that we are on a path to interplanetary teleportation. Should we include the estimated bandwidth for that as well?"Right, because when drafting policy standards, who in their right mind would want them to be forward looking? If we have a feeble definition, like say oh, 1 Mbps with a 2 GB monthly cap, everyone technically has broadband and we can all go home and drink whiskey sours, thrilled with the false knowledge that the United States is a broadband powerhouse. But a standard of 25 Mbps? That makes it harder than ever for the usual assortment of status quo apologists to continue hallucinating that the U.S. broadband market is fiercely competitive.
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That is akin to seeing a unicorn these days.
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a small victory, but a victory nonetheless...
thanks for being a public servant, mr wheeler...
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Am I the only one seeing that tags thinking as a very good reason against accepting status quo?
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Idjit Paid claimed that it was 'executive overreach,' and Michael O'Really claimed that it was 'shifting the goalposts,' like the technological advances mean nothing to the public.
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Isn't that explicitly the point of this announcement? Moving the goal further ahead to push the industry to improve? What does he think, we should leave the goal at 4mbps until 2100 when we reach 100% broadband coverage, and only move it then?
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Gentleman, we just saw an unicorn. Brace yourselves, the Yeti is coming (Title II).
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Title II
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Assuming the rules get written without a lot of shitty loopholes in them, and don't get reversed down the road.
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Fingers crossed for Google fiber!
I'm quite surprised it passed though, this Wheeler guy dreamt seem as bad as imagined initially.
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Time to doubledown, but instead of ISP lies its going to be double dose of regulation! Bend over.
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I'd LOVE to have 4M/1M
25M/3M? Yeah, we'll have that approximately never.
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Re: I'd LOVE to have 4M/1M
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Re: I'd LOVE to have 4M/1M
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So you have momma with her devices, poppa, and the kids and suddenly 4 megs down is suddenly back in the days of 56k speeds; too slow for all to use.
Were Google suddenly to come to town, these incumbent telcos would be facing the same dilemma they now face where Google is active. That is to say, how to keep the customers they have pissed off and pissed on regularly. The sudden concern with slow speeds and high prices shows it for what it is. Monopoly gouging at it's finest.
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Two providers is not real competition.
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Every single time that they trot out this "nobody needs that much bandwidth" argument, they do the math based on a single person doing a single thing at a time. In my household, this is rarely the case.
They have to lie by omission in this way because if they didn't, they'd have no argument.
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What if he had 12/1 ten years ago?
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"Unsafe At Any Speed" 2.0
Please, Ralph!
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Definitions are like statistics....
UNLIMITED data anyone?
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"Advanced"
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Signed,
Your Local Internet Monopoly
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broadband
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Re: broadband
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All about the units
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Upstream, folks!
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Re: Upstream, folks!
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I wish I had thought to capture screenshots, because when I looked up their offerings today they have been changed to "Now 30 Mbps (was 15 Mbps)" and "Now 50 Mbps (was 25 Mbps)" plans at the same high prices.
Hard to prove cause and effect, but it would seem to me that the recent moves by the FCC may be actually in improving our bandwidth speeds in the area already (well, their advertised speeds at least).
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Technology does move on, and..
Perhaps a spread of offerings would be more sensible?
Less than 4 down or .5 up - "Low Speed" Internet, or indeed any marketing term they choose to use, provided it doesn't include the word "broadband" anywhere in it
4 down, 0.5 up - "Basic" Broadband (not allowed to be called just "broadband", always this combo)
10 down, 1.5 up - "Standard" Broadband, or just "broadband", but not the terms set out below for 20+
20 down or better - "Advanced"/"High Speed" broadband, and/or marketable as "broadband-nn" where "nn" is the lower of download speed *or* 8xUpload speed; so you could advertise "broadband-25" provided upload was over 3mb.
with the -nn notation, providers can then compete on advertised speed with other providers, without having to worry about definition of terms?
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