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 The view of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications is that the FCC's data collection standards are hopelessly outdated, and is proposing a number of updates to their criteria.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.'"

What about uplink speed?

[jandrese]

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:So I don't have broadband?

[LordVader717]

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

I thought Broadband Was...

[Gates82]

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 I guess my Network+ book is outdated, or soon will be.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?

Re:Forgive me

[faloi]

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

[geekoid]

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

broadband != speed

[j00r0m4nc3r]

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.

Truth in advertising

[grapeape]

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.

Re:So when will it be like Japan?

[Laebshade]

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:Forgive me

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Re:Forgive me

[Kadin2048]

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.

Definitions

[s31523]

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.

Re:rename it

[swrider]

This has always been an indication of the ignorance of the people throwing that marketing-kidnapped term around. 'Broadband' has a specific meaning already, that has nothing to do with 'speed'. If they want to define classes of connection 'speed', why not add BPS designations to terms such as 'high-speed', 'mid-speed', 'low-speed', and 'so-frickin-slow-speed'?

Truth in advertising

[Perp Atuitie]

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.

Re:Forgive me

[Anonymous Coward]

There are government programs funding internet buildouts in schools. I'd guess almost everyone is built out by now, or the the writing is on the wall that massive government spending won't be required. By changing the terminology, congress will force states to upgrade everything - thus causing more dollars to be spent (funnelled) to education. Elections are coming up, and the Democrats need to keep the NEA beast fed.

Oddly enough, the code word I need to type in for this comment is campus. The universe mocks us.

The pedantic tech says...

[OldeTimeGeek]

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?

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

[zappepcs]

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.

Like monkeying with the poverty line...

[Etherwalk]

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.

Re:What about uplink speed?

[asphaltjesus]

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.

FCC not the limit

[Sparkle]

The demorats can spout all the nonsense they like. The Republicans can promise broadband for everyone. They are all full of it.

Sad fact is, broadband by any definition is NOT available to vast areas of the good old USA! I am not talking about mountains and deserts either. I am talking about one of the fastest growing counties in the US, only one Central Office away from a metro area.

The telcos take fees for "rural infrastructure" to the tune of millions and what do they do with it? Whiz it away screaming "We are your broadband and entertainment company!" Do they come thru? Absolutely not! Not for the last 9 years they don't and they won't. Sorry, DSL is not available in your area at this time.

So you see it matters not what the FCC says or the government does. The telcos FAIL and REFUSE to provide broadband, even at the slowest recognized "fast" speed from years ago. If we are lucky they keep the POTS line up and our 24K connection works.

Re:Good

[HAKdragon]

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.

US Internet Infrastructure is PATHETIC

[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.

2Mbps upload

[Riskable]

I hope their definition is symmetric. There's lots you can do with 2Mbps download but there's lots more you can do with 2Mbps upload. It would be more pertinent for congress to bring back local loop unbundling and to split up companies that sell both content and Internet access (i.e. cable companies and telephone companies now selling TV).

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

[Anonymous Coward]

let's design for the next fifty years

BAD idea! Bad because it's impossible. Fifty years ago I was five years old, old enough to remember what it was like fifty years ago.

• Television was still relatively new, black and white (with snow), about 19 inches for a big one, and St Louis had two channels
  
• FM radio was unheard of. The first stereo FM rock station was KSHE in St Louis, 1967 [kuro5hin.org]
  
• Stereo was new
  
• Computers were million dollar monoliths [kuro5hin.org] that used punch cards, needed whole buildings to house, and armies of technitions to run
  
• Transistor radios were new. Most electronics still used vacuum tubes
• No integrated circuts
• Phones had rotary dials
• No cell phones
• No VCRs
• No microwave ovens
• No pocket calculators (I used a slide rule to cheat in math class in high school, dumb teachers...)
• No digital clocks or watches (in fact, no digital anything)
  
• No fuel injection on cars
• No seat belts (let alone seat belt laws)
  
• No air bags
• No US interstate highway system
• Airlines' planes had propellors and few people actually rode in them (only the rich); no contrails.
• No such thing as a female condom
  
• No cataract surgery (actually the first implant was in Britain in 1949 but they weren't widespread until the late 1960s)
  
• USSR and US had thousands of nuclear warheads on ICBMs aimed at each other
  
• No satellites, no astronauts, no Hubble, the X-15 reached the "edge of space" and was really, really cool (at least to a young nerd)
  
• No pacemakers
  
• No stents
  
• I had my tonsils taken out 49 years ago. They used ether [wikipedia.org] (automotive starting fluid) as an anesthetic
  
• Casts for broken bones were made of plaster (I had two of them 47 years ago)
  
• No crack cocaine (In some ways things were actually better, not all inventions are good)
• No ultrasound
  

I could go on listing what nobody had dreamed of all day long. Few if any of these things could be forseen. Hell, my grandpa didn't even have indoor plumbing!

The closest anyone came to predicting the internet was Isaac Asimov's "Multivac", a city sized computer that everybody had terminals to. Remember, the world's biggest computer was less powerful than your wristwatch.

As to the cataract surgery, I had my left eye done with the latest technology [slashdot.org]. I'm now better than 20/20 at all distances! The new implants allow you to focus. Most geezers my age need reading glasses. NOBODY fifty years ago would have predicted that badly nearsighted mcgrew would ever be able to drive a car without glasses, or that any fifty five year old man could read without reading glasses.

Whatever they'll have when you're my dad's age you can't even guess at, any more than anyone could have forseen desktop computers, cell phones, CDs, or the internet.

It is a completely different world than it was fifty years ago. Fifty years from now it will be even more different to now than 50 years ago was.

There's no way to plan for fifty years in the future.

-mcgrew

apparently a t1 is no longer broadband

[sponger]

maybe they are trying to kill the t1 market so nobody gets a CIR or 5 "9" 's level of reliability

Re:Huh?

[freeweed]

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

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

[Chandon Seldon]

Very few of them should. They should be outsourcing such things, no matter how cheap bandwidth is.

You have way, way too little information to make that call for "most" businesses. What if it's an Asterisk server that's being used to host their office telephone system? What if they're hosting a game server for some local Quake clans who want a crazy low ping? What if they're streaming live video? What if price is more important than reliability?

The needs of businesses vary, trying to declare that one solution is best for everyone as an excuse to avoid building valuable telecommunications infrastructure is doubly absurd.