FCC Finally Updates America’s Pathetic Definition Of ‘Broadband’ To 100 Mbps

For decades, the FCC has maintained an arguably pathetic definition of “broadband,” allowing the telecom industry to under-deliver substandard access. After some industry lobbying to ensure it wasn’t too stringent, the agency is finally getting around to an update, and has announced that they’ll soon classify “broadband” as anything faster than 100 Mbps downstream, 20 Mbps upstream.

According to FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel, the agency’s ultimate goal is to define broadband as 1 Gbps down, 500 Mbps up, though that part is largely aspirational:

“This fix is overdue. It aligns us with pandemic legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the work of our colleagues at other agencies. It also helps us better identify the extent to which low-income neighborhoods and rural communities are underserved. And because doing big things is in our DNA, we also adopt a long-term goal of 1 Gigabit down and 500 Megabits up.”

As an aside, as somebody who has covered this agency professionally for more than twenty years, “doing big things” is most assuredly not in the FCC’s DNA.

Broadband was originally defined as any 200 kbps connection, a pathetic metric from the very start. In 2010, that pathetic definition was changed to a slightly less pathetic definition: 4 Mbps downstream, 1 Mbps upstream. In 2015, it was changed again to a slightly more reasonable but still pathetic 25 Mbps downstream, 3 Mbps upstream, where it stayed for almost a decade.

For that entire decade everybody from consumer groups to the GAO told the FCC that the sluggish 25/3 definition didn’t reflect modern standards, and let the telecom industry get away with providing substandard service. The Trump FCC’s response: to propose lowering the definition even further.

Even the FCC’s new 100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up threshold was watered down by cable and wireless lobbyists, who knew they’d struggle providing consistent 100 Mbps upstream. And it’s still relatively tepid given some municipal broadband networks have been offering 10 Gbps connections since 2015. And it came long after other agencies (like the NTIA) had adopted the standard for federal subsidies.

So yes, hooray that the FCC has decided twenty years fucking late to raise the bar somewhere around ankle height for America’s giant telecoms to try and avoid tripping over. This at least puts a little more pressure on ISPs that are still overcharging consumers for 2003-era Digital Subscriber Line (DSL).

But the agency’s apathy up until this point did untold damage in terms of letting telecom giants like Comcast and AT&T obscure the competitive impact of mindless consolidation and regional monopolization. And the agency “with big things in its DNA” still doesn’t collect and share broadband pricing data, lest the press, public, and lawmakers realize the full scope of that competition problem.