Broadband isn't Broadband Unless its 2Mbps?

quanticle writes "According to House Democrats, broadband isn't broadband unless its at least 2Mbps. The view of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications is that the FCC's data collection standards are hopelessly outdated, and is proposing a number of updates to their criteria. For one, they want 'broadband' reclassified to at least 2mbs, up from 200kbps. Another requirement will change the FCC's outlook on broadband availability. Just because one household in a zip code has broadband access, that will not longer mean everyone in the zip code does. 'The plan went over well with the consumer advocates who appeared before the subcommittee. Larry Cohen, president of the Communication Workers of America, said that the US is "stuck with a twentieth century Internet" and that he would support increasing the "broadband" definition to 2Mbps. Ben Scott of Free Press echoed that sentiment, suggesting that the definition needs to be an evolving standard that increases over time, which is in contrast to the current FCC definition; it has not changed in nine years. "We have always been limited by the FCC's inadequate and flawed data," he said.'"

Forgive me

[Kelz (611260)]

But its too correct (according to the summary, I didn't RTFA). Something else has to be behind this, given american politics.

Re:Forgive me

[faloi (738831)]

It's getting close to an election year, more and more people are using the Internet. It only makes sense to push some feel good "chicken in every pot" sorts of initiatives. If I thought the federal government could and would really cut through the layers of red tape and regulations in place to actually get faster connections to everybody, I'd even almost rise to not being cynical about it.

Re:Forgive me

[EMeta (860558)]

While I completely agree with your sentiment, it does grate on me a bit that 'close to an election year' is 6 months since the last election, and just 4 since the new congress came in. It feels like when they have Christmas displays up in September, except probably closer in analogy if they had them in April.

Re:

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

Well, the way the states keep pushing the primaries up, give it a few years and you'll be able to vote in the general election while simultaneously voting in the primary for the next one.

Save a lot of taxpayer money that way, actually.

Re:Forgive me

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

It's nothing to do with that; it's just regulating what the cable/phone companies can claim actually IS broadband; as it stands they screw a lot of people who don't know any better by selling them "broadband" which is no such thing by modern standards.

I think it's definitely a good step in the "truth in advertising" department...I'm tired of sneering at the commercials where the broadband companies are comparing their download speeds to 28.8 modems and other such crap.

Look out for the fine print

[azrider (918631)]

It's nothing to do with that; it's just regulating what the cable/phone companies can claim actually IS broadband; as it stands they screw a lot of people who don't know any better by selling them "broadband" which is no such thing by modern standards. I think it's definitely a good step in the "truth in advertising" department...I'm tired of sneering at the commercials where the broadband companies are comparing their download speeds to 28.8 modems and other such crap.

Just look at some of the offerings. One that I am familiar with advertises 3 different wireless services (768k MIR for $59, 1M MIR for $99, 3M MIR for $139). MIR stands for Maximum Information Rate as in "Up to 3Mb/sec". However, each of the services also specifies a CIR (Committed Information Rate) of 512k. This means that, until your rate drops below 512k/sec, you cannot complain that they are not adhering to their part of the contract.

Remember that and always ask for both the CIR and MIR when talking to a sales person. If they will not specify a CIR (or don't know what it is), RUN, don't walk for the nearest exit.

Re:

[geekoid (135745)]

Most American politics is pretty cut and dry. That stuff rarely gets talked about by the media.

Re:Forgive me

[British (51765)]

Most American politics is pretty cut and dry. That stuff rarely gets talked about by the media.

I'm just surprised that politicians are talking about the Internet not involving the legislation bingo buzzwords ["predator" || "myspace" || "molestor" || "terrorism" || "censorship" || "children" || "tubes" || "columbine" ]

It's kind of like reading a Family Circus comic and having Billy talk about some sort of technology made after 1952. It just surprises you.

US Internet Infrastructure is PATHETIC

[by Anonymous Coward]

Cable is the best most people can get (yeah, there might be FIOS in a few cities, but I'm in #5 in the US and we sure don't have it; Utah also has UTOPIA, but I don't trust their lawmakers not to screw it up or censor it somehow). There, you get caps like 20 GB / month total transfer, which make it a complete waste, or worse, you go with Comcast and get unknown limits above which they accuse you of piracy and cut you off with no appeal.

Or you can go with DSL. Good luck if you don't live right next to the CO. Damn phone company took an entire MONTH to find a working line for me. How the hell do you not notice that one of the lines you tagged was in use!? T1s are nice, but way out of my price range. $300-$400 a month is a bit much, even if I understand why they price them like that.

Or you can get satellite. Not bad, but your uplink will be crap and your latency painful. Or, heh, you can go back to dial-up. That's great, if you don't use anything but email...

Compare this to almost everywhere else in the first world, where they have local loop unbundling, the telcos are public utilities (rather than deregulated monopolies) and you see that we're *WAY* behind. Japan is awesome: 10 & 100 Mbps connections for less than you pay the cable companies. Other countries, too, have invested in infrastructure and are just plain leaving us behind. In the US? We gave the telcos billions to upgrade things, and just what have they done? Hardly anything, from the looks of it.

So the story here is that the Democrats want to up the standards so that we in the US will have to stop kidding ourselves about the craptastic state of our internet infrastructure? GOOD! I'm sick of the telcos trying to kill things like Net Neutrality and using "deregulation" as a way to become legal monopolies and screw their customers over.

I'm sick of hearing "We don't care, we're the phone company!" and I'll probably give my vote to someone who seems likely to make them eat those words.

Mod parent up

[MS-06FZ (832329)]

The parent post is a helpful visual diagram of how a high-capacity channel enables more traffic.

hooray

[yakumo.unr (833476)]

Fat tubes for all!

Korea has 10MBPs to the home...

[athloi (1075845)]

Let's aim high. In the future, it is likely many individuals will run media servers, VPN in to home, download a ton of video and use services like VOIP that rely on quality bandwidth. Instead of going piecemeal into this future, let's design for the next fifty years, roll out the hardware, and enjoy a nice long depreciation curve. It will be cheaper in the long run...

Re:

[zappepcs (820751)]

10Mbytes? Why stop there? Fiber will give you 30 easily. The infrastructure upgrade to handle all those 30Mbyte end user connections, but that can be done over years. It won't be long before wireless will be competing successfully with DSL and making dialup seem a bad value.

Re:Korea has 10MBPs to the home...

[zappepcs (820751)]

Yes, I do know that, but mentioning it means having to think about and discuss the fact that we HAVE paid for the fiber, and now Verizon et al want to charge us again for installing it via higher fees.

Re:Korea has 10MBPs to the home...

[odoketa (1040340)]

And France has 20MB symmetric. The numbers are somewhat irrelevant when you start talking about orders of magnitude. The fact is that the US is behind in ways that are staggering, and it's hurting us economically. How many more small businesses would buy a server if they could actually get the pipe to host their own apps? How much more software/multimedia would be sold if it came in seconds, instead of hours.

At least in France, many of the problems were solved by local loop unbundling. I imagine the same would work here.

LLU's dead; the FCC killed it.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

At least in France, many of the problems were solved by local loop unbundling. I imagine the same would work here.

We had local loop unbundling here in the U.S., but then the FCC took it away. Now if you want DSL, it's back to the local phone company -- except for the places where they still have outstanding contracts with independent ISPs (like Speakeasy, etc.), there's no choice.

The FCC's rationale for reneging on the LLU decision was that consumers now had "choice" without it -- between the cable company,

Not the FCC's fault

[snowwrestler (896305)]

The FCC has fairly little independent power; it serves primarily to implement laws passed by Congress. In this case unbundling was part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act passed by Congress. The FCC implemented it and was promptly sued for it. In the U.S., the federal courts have ultimate jurisdiction to interpret legislation, so the FCC was bound by whatever the court ordered. Over the next 10 years it was ordered by the courts to reimplement and reimplement, as suit after suit was filed by the telcos. In 2006 it finally won court approval for its implementation of the unbundling rules, based on a law that was now 10 years old. So if you don't like the way it's done now, look to the courts (and the original, poorly-worded law).

Also: the distinction between a "telecommunications service" and a "data service" is most definitely NOT pedantic. In fact it is the crucial heart of the entire fight over "net neutrality." The two terms are given different definitions and treatments in the 1996 Act--in particular, telecom services are held to common carrier status, while data services are not. Thus when the 9th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that cable modem is a "data service", it exempted it from common carrier status--essentially granting permission to violate net neutrality.

Now the telcos want DSL classified the same way (it's currently considered a telecom service since it is delivered over phone lines), and they are lobbying extremely hard to get it. Plus, they are rolling out things like FiOS, which as a fiber optic line is considered a data service not a telecom service.

In the U.S., the "net neutrality" we took for granted for years was a direct result of the fact that we accessed the Internet over phone lines, and thus it was a common carrier service according to federal law. Now, with cable and fiber access, this protection is largely gone, and a fight for net neutrality protection must be waged.

Re:Korea has 10MBPs to the home...

[eln (21727)]

10 MB/s seems like overkill just to allow old people to send email.

T-1

[Gates82 (706573)]

Great now my boss will want to pay even more for an internet connection at work. Our T-1 wont be broadband anymore. And before the T-1 = slow debate starts, I've suggested alternative implementations.

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?

Re:

[dgatwood (11270)]

A T1 is slow by broadband standards. Compared with Europe, I think 2Mbps is actually too slow. I'd set the limit at 5Mbps as a minimum, and probably 10. They chose 2Mbps to make us look bad compared to the rest of the world without looking as totally backwater as we are.

Of course, if the government came back with stats that said the U.S. had 0.0000000001% broadband deployment, people might start suing their broadband providers for calling 768/128 "broadband" and then things would get ugly. On the othe

Re:

[LurkerXXX (667952)]

Get a grip. They can't sue their broadband providers for calling 768/128 broadband, because it is broadband according to the current FCC definition. I'm sure if the FCC redefines it, the providers will change their lingo.

What about uplink speed?

[jandrese (485)]

If the downlink is required to be 2Mbps to count as "broadband", I think the uplink should be a minimum of 512Kbps. Far too many people are stuck on lines that have 128Kbps up and far too easily saturate the uplink and bog the whole connection down.

Re:What about uplink speed?

[asphaltjesus (978804)]

You must be new here.

Providing greater upload speed runs counter to absolutely everything the telcos, and media conglomerates want in their new media delivery system.

Democratizing information and technology broadly works against both commercial and political interests. That's why uplink speed is BAD.

What about latency?

[raehl (609729)]

I can do 1 Gbit/sec with my station wagon, but the latency kinda sucks.

Also, the MTU (MINIMUM transfer unit) is 4 GB.

Well, 780 MB if you only want to use CDs.

rename it

[Bobtree (105901)]

They're widely misusing the term "broadband" already (just like "modem" and many others), so why not simply define the class of service they want to standardize and give it a NEW NAME instead of abusing existing ones? My vote is for "Standardized Fast Ubernet." You can guess what else the acronym might stand for.

The drama of SCSI?

[RingDev (879105)]

What kind of SCSI do you have?

SCSI-1
Fast SCSI
Fast Wide SCSI
Ultra SCSI(1.5)
Ultra SCSI(3)
Wide Ultra SCSI
Wide Ultra SCSI(1.5)
Wide Ultra SCSI(3)
Ultra2 SCSI
Wide Ultra2 SCSI
Ultra3 SCSI or Ultra160 SCSI
Ultra320 SCSI

Nah. Just make the term "Broad Band" a standard that is reviewed every 2 years and be done with it. Otherwise, in 20 years we'll be connecting over the Super double wide ultra fast inter tubes of doom .

-Rick

I thought Broadband Was...

[Gates82 (706573)]

I don't really like this redefinition. I thought broadband had to do with the way in which data is transferred; ie. the ability to send multiple frequencies or channels, where as baseband can only handle one. I guess my Network+ book is outdated, or soon will be.

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?

Whoa!

[creimer (824291)]

I thought 56K was broadband when I upgraded from my 14.4K modem. Of course, that was back in 1998.

What again was broadband?

[dascandy (869781)]

Broadband, as opposed to baseband, is technically defined as anything not at the base frequency of 0Hz. Baseband is at the base frequency and up, broadband is at a higher frequency and up.

FCC can't even seem to get a technicality right.

broadband != speed

[j00r0m4nc3r (959816)]

When I was in college back in the triassic period, broadband had nothing to do with transmission rates, but with the fact that multiple channels were transmitted through a single wire (like TV) over a more broad frequency band than single-channel narrowband transmission, regardless of speed. Every time I hear someone say "broadband" in reference to the speed of some sort of internet connection I sort of cringe inside.

Re:

[RexRhino (769423)]

It is kind of like "Organic" foods... Most commercial pesticides are organic in this sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry [wikipedia.org] ... But they are not "organic" in this sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food [wikipedia.org] ...

What used to have something to do with carbon and hydrogen now means "yuppie approved".

Once you insert a technical term into the public vernacular, it will take on a widely different meaning.

Truth in advertising

[grapeape (137008)]

One good thing could come out of this. Setting a definition for broadband will reduce misleading "broadband" offers from cable and dsl companies. Either they raise their data rates or they have to call it something else. Most will choose to increase bandwidth since having to admit they are slower would be an advertising nightmare.

Definitions

[s31523 (926314)]

For one, they want 'broadband' reclassified to at least 2mbs

The definition also needs to specify up/down speeds. I don't consider a satellite connection with 1.5Mbs down and 56K up (phoneline) a broadband connection.

Truth in advertising

[Perp Atuitie (919967)]

Around here, AT&T and Comcast, among others, have been pushing cheap "broadband" that turns out to be in the 600kbps range. If the hapless FCC is forced to adopt realistic definitions, so much the better for consumers and for the communications industry in the long run. I have yet to find a downside explained in all the lazy cynical-posing comments.

The pedantic tech says...

[OldeTimeGeek (725417)]

Broadband is a signaling method - as long as the Congress is deciding what speed of Internet connectivity is appropriate, can they also legislate a more appropriate term?

Like monkeying with the poverty line...

[Etherwalk (681268)]

It's all politics. You redefine "broadband" (in this case, the new definition in a way consumers will like, since they want more of it) so that you can say come election time that only x number of homes have broadband, and blame the lack of availability on the previous administration. (Or you can even say that the number of US homes with broadband went down, though that looks worse if you're called on the definition change.) You can fit a single statistic into a good sound byte, but politicians aren't good at fitting an explanation for why the statistic is ridiculous into a sound byte.

This is similar to changing the poverty formula--or any other similar metric--in advance of an election.

Government in action.

[RealProgrammer (723725)]

Rather than siting down for a minute and actually, you know, thinking about something, or heaven forbid talking to someone who has thought about it, politicians and bureaucrats just up and make laws. It's sort of like Slashdot, except the rule is "legislate first, then maybe think" instead of "post frist ;-, think second".

The most important difference between broadband and not broadband is Always On (or, as we Mediacom customers say, "Sometimes On"). The definition ought to be stated in terms of connect latency: how much difference is there between the time it takes to establish the first connection of a particular online session and the average connection time during a session? If the first is no different than the average, you have broadband.

The next most important attribute is Quality of Service:

• How often is the thing down (or, as we Mediacom customers say, "what time of day is it mostly useable")?
• (more generally): What is the real expected speed?
• Is my bandwidth shared with a horde of 9-year-olds playing the latest Britney video
• (or their dads, playing certain other videos)?
• Does it feel like dialup, since I'm not sure when I will need to reconnect?

The top speed of that connection, and the uplink and downlink speed difference, is important, but less so. Caching, prefetch, and P2P techniques mean that as long as you have anything faster than 9600bps, if it's always on you will have essentially the same online experience as someone with a 2Mbps connection.

Now, with regard to live video audio as a substitute for broadcast media, the faster the better. And 2Mbps is not enough, and is certainly not a magic threshhold, given the QoS concerns above.

"Up to" should be considered deceptive advertising

[Animats (122034)]

What we need is an FTC rule that advertising any service quality or quantity with the words "up to" or substantially similar language is, by law, considered deceptive. Advertising should have to specify a guaranteed level of service. That would put cable and DSL on the same measurement scale, discourage underprovisioning, and make cellular data transfer rates in ads something you could rely on.

There's precedent for this. At various times in the past, the FTC had to tighten up the definition of "horsepower" for cars and "watts" for audio gear. [angelfire.com]

CALEA Impact

[jaredmauch (633928)]

I wonder how this would impact CALEA requirements set by the FCC for 'broadband' providers, if it were redefined to 2Mb/s. It might mean stuff under that speed would no longer need to be LI (lawful-intercept) capable. This could have significant cost savings for ISPs for compliance...

Fix "Internet Service Provider" too

[Refried Beans (70083)]

I just hate it when I find out the "Internet Service" I was paying for doesn't actually include everything the Internet can offer. If companies want to sell "Internet Service" they shouldn't be allowed to block servers. Call it "Web Service" or something that shows you can't do anything with your Internet connection.

Re:So I don't have broadband?

[LordVader717 (888547)]

There's people who think 56kbps is enough. Those people use the internet for emails.

ObSlashdot Meme

[sconeu (64226)]

So they're old Korean people?

Re:So I don't have broadband?

[drinkypoo (153816)]

My wife and I share a 1.5Mbps DSL connection with 256k up. I've never had to wish it were faster.

You and your wife are boring. I can saturate both directions on the T1 at work without any help.

If you want to tell us to get off your lawn, just put up a sign.

Re:So I don't have broadband?

[RingDev (879105)]

You and your wife are boring. I can saturate both directions on the T1 at work without any help.

Your boss lets you look at porn at work?

-Rick

Re:

[Duke (23059)]

Yeah. But the poster mentions 2mbps. 2 milli bps. Now that is slow. Five hundred seconds to get one bit. SI prefixes are case sensitive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[HAKdragon (193605)]

You have to remember that Cable/DSL penetration wasn't nearly as high as it is now when Napster was at it's peak usage. Then again, I'm sure many of its users were students at colleges and universities.

Re:So when will it be like Japan?

[Laebshade (643478)]

And, I really don't agree with folks who say consumers don't need that bandwidth

I'm going to expand a little on that with a simple line: what about consumers who want that bandwidth? Why should we have to wait for anything to download? And by wait I mean longer than instantaneous.

Re:Huh?

[T-Ranger (10520)]

As much as I loath the US Congress, and celebrate Wikipedia, I haven't quite gotten to the point where I think that the the later should be able to overrule the former.

Re:Huh?

[freeweed (309734)]

As a Canadian, let me assure you: we have.

Re:2mbps

[f1055man (951955)]

I hate you.