A New Definition of Broadband?

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel has circulated a draft Notice of Inquiry inside the FCC to kick off the required annual report to Congress on the state of US broadband. As part of preparing that report, she is recommending that the FCC adopt a new definition of broadband of 100/20 Mbps and establish gigabit broadband as a longer-term goal. First, the FCC is late to the game since Congress has already set a speed of 100/20 Mbps for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program and other federal grant programs. Another issue that has always bothered me about picking a definition of broadband is that the demand for speed has continued to grow. If you define broadband by the speeds that are needed today, then that definition will soon be obsolete. The last definition of broadband speed was set in 2015. Are we going to wait another seven years if we change to 100/20 Mbps this year? If so, the 100/20 Mbps definition will quickly become as practically obsolete as happened with 25/3. Trying to define broadband by a single speed is a classical Gordian knot – a problem that can’t be reasonably solved. We can pick a number, but by definition, any number we choose will fail some of the tests I’ve described above. I guess we have to do it, but I wish there was another way.

[Doug Dawson is president of CCG Consulting.]