RSSFCC still needs a good definition for 'broadband'
By Tim Conneally | Published August 20, 2009, 3:56 PM
In order to move ahead with the National Broadband Plan, the FCC has to first say exactly what qualifies as "broadband." Today, the Commission has issued a public notice seeking a tailored public comment on exactly what the definition of broadband should be.
Already, the FCC has what it believes to be a definition for the term, presented on its Broadband.gov site inaugurated earlier this week: "The term broadband commonly refers to high-speed Internet access that is always on and faster than the traditional dial-up access." But here's the thing: What, exactly, is "high?"
On the FCC's blog today, Senior Advisor Carlos Kirjner wrote, "Much of the recent debate tends to center on throughput speeds. Engineers know that these numbers by themselves are most often misleading. For example, in most cases the 'advertised' throughput speed has a tenuous relation with the actually delivered speed, which will actually vary over time, depending on the application, the server, and many other factors.
"But why do we care?" Kirjner continues. "Several reasons: (1.) If we want to decide who has and who does not have broadband, we actually need to agree on what we mean by broadband. (2.) If we want to decide who can take advantage of one type of application or another, we need to know what they are actually getting today, and what is the gap between that and what they actually need to get. (3.) If we need to know how much it would cost the country to enable all or a subset of its households and businesses to take advantage of one application or another, we need to know what the gap is between where we are and where we want to be. (4.) If we want to ensure that consumers have a clear and accurate view of what they are getting for their money, we need to decide what are the important metrics, and how to measure them."
If you'd like to submit a brief comment on your definition of "broadband," you can do so in the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System under the heading "National Broadband Plan Notice of Inquiry - Docket 09-51." The comment period closes on September 8, so look for broadband's official definition shortly thereafter.
I have been living in Korea for over a year now and if there is one thing that keeps me here, it's the internet speed and quality that you get (in Seoul but also most other larger cities).
A monthly flatrate of just about 30 US$ gets you nominal 100 Mbps cable internet (of which I can realise around 70% for servers locates in USA and Europe) plus about 70 TV channels for which I actually have no use or time.
Free (!) internet in coffee shops and public places (there always seems to be a WiFi hotspot in the area) vary from 10 to 100 Mbps, with actual speeds from 20 to 40% of that depending on the number of connected computers. Never less than 1 Mbps.
Upload speeds are a bit different, for example at home I have of course 100 Mbps down but only 4 Mbps up, at the coffee shop about 10x faster, at work still faster.
After a year I can hardly imagine that I used to pay 70 US$ for a meager 10 Mbps DSL line that gave me 80% realised speed at best and was often choked up every time there was a quake or typhoon around Taiwan.
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|In most of my state we are just now getting 10mb cable. Thats 1mb/second off a good server, and that's like freaking magic compared to the 730KB we were getting just over a week ago. This is, of course, only available to those in the towns and suburbs. I live about 7 miles from the nearest cable or DSL. What can I get? Other than GSM wireless, nothing. That includes dial-up, which I had for the better part of ten years at a blazing 28.8 Kbs. The lines here are so decrepit now that not even a modem connection works anymore. It takes two weeks just to get a repairman to fix your phone when its out (which is frequently). Sure, I have 5 or 6 rock-solid bars of 3G with AT&T, and I've tried that for internet. That meant paying $70/month for less than HALF the bandwidth they promised on a connection that can't be shared. Hearing you folks speak of 1 or 2mb connections as a baseline for broadband is almost too much to believe. I would do backflips for 64KB/second "midband" at less than $40/month. So would most of rural America, but how do the telecoms respond? In my state Verizon is trying to sell off their entire landline business. The government is holding up the deal by demanding that whoever takes over commits to improving service in this area - it's anyone's guess how it will all play out. Meanwhile the wireless, cable and phone carriers are falling over themselves to get even MORE bandwidth to the already saturated urban centers. There's a fortune to be made selling broadband outside the city limits of America and absolutely nobody is seizing the opportunity. Hopefully the whole white space initiative will finally get something going, but I'm not holding my breath. If I had to speak for those of us stuck on the "last mile" with virtually no internet, I would have to define broadband as a connection fast enough to , while connected to a typical high-capacity server under moderate load, and without complications from unforeseen technical issues, pass each of the following tests in series:
(a) flawlessly stream a video of at least 720x480 resolution with 44khz stereo at 30fps;
(b) maintain a minimum speed of 150Kbs/second while downloading a 20mb normal ZIP file, and an overall average speed of at least 300Kbs;
(c) be able to perform the first two tasks at 50% of their required effectiveness on an upstream connection (i.e. remote access VPN, Slingplayer, etc.). This assumes no bottlenecks caused by inadequate hardware on the PC acting as a server, and;
(d) maintain an average latency of 100ms throughout.
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|Ten times faster than the previous standard,
which would give: marketed speed; 566000
bits per second: measured DL; 350000 bits
per second.
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|My parents' DSL (WindStream) is 512kb/s (not sure about upload), I'd never heard of DSL being less than 768kb/s. Sad thing is it's the same price Verizon charges for 768kb/s DSL (too bad Verizon doesn't service their area), the only consolation it that they're right across the street (~ 75 feet away) from the vault (they're ~ 6-7 miles out of town) & get top speed. Still seems like a ripoff to me, there's no reason to gimp it like that other than greed. I think 1 Mb/s down should be rock bottom for broadband & that at under $20 mo.
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|Here companies consider broadband often as low as 256kbps (USA) however I feel that is too low to really be considered it. Many companies over a low service of 768kbps, I'd consider that barely adequete in this day and age.
If they want figures that will hold for the future at least start at 2mbps, that is reasonable.
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|2Mb down, 0.5Mb up as a minimum, I think. Just a personal preference for what I feel is 'broadband'. This would put Australia's broadband penetration figures through the floor, however: most people are on 1.5Mb or less, because that is all they can get for less than $100/month. :P
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