FCC Finally Redefines Broadband

The Federal Communications Commission, following years of criticism and threats of Congressional action, yesterday finally issued an order scrapping its previous definition of "broadband" as any service delivering of at least 200 Kb/s. The order, to be implemented by new rules to be issued within 120 days, sets 768 Kb/s as the minimum speed for what the FCC is now calling "basic" broadband, which extends up to 1.5 Mb/s. Slower speeds, from the old 200 Kb/s definition of broadband up to 768 Kb/s are redefined as "first generation data." In addition, the FCC said it will now require broadband providers to report subscriber totals for individual higher speed tiers, which it didn't give names to, of; 1.5 Mb/s - 3 Mb/s; 3 Mb/s - 6 Mb/s; and above 6 Mb/s. Changing the definition of broadband had become a highly politicized issue, with the Republican-controlled FCC often accused of keeping the lower speed definition in an attempt to show that broadband in the United States was growing at a healthy pace. However Democrats, on both the FCC and in Congress, had been howling. Now, with election year finesse, things are apparently changing. The FCC also is scrapping the highly-criticized FCC methodology of using Zip codes to assess broadband penetration, and counting an entire Zip code as having broadband available if even just one resident had broadband. Data will now be collected by census tract, giving a much finer-grained view of the situation. Also changed has been the FCC's practice of completely ignoring the difference between business and residential broadband. The new rules require wired, terrestrial fixed wireless, and satellite broadband service providers to report, for each census tract and each speed tier in which the provider offers service, the number of subscribers and the percentage of subscribers that are residential. The rules don't, though, require categorization of business broadband - essentially services that might be symmetrical and delivers speeds that can be 100 Mb/s or even 1 Gb/s. Also glaringly absent from the new reporting regime, in the opinion of highly vocal members of the Democratic minority on the FCC, is any requirement to provide pricing information.
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