FCC changes the way it measures US broadband

Finally after all these years, the FCC has decided that it will no longer call 200 Kbps “broadband”. Of course this is long after other countries (and many Americans) have ceased considering the 200 Kbps level as anything but dial-up. Now 768 Kbps is the threshold. It’s like “50 is the new 30″. Oh well. In my view 768 Kbps is laughable and an insult to the phrase “high speed”, but, to be fair, it’s better than nothing, so let’s give the FCC a big round of applause. Now that we’ve finished cheering (2 seconds), let’s get down to the details.

Other changes in the way the FCC measures the quality and reach of broadband service in the US:

• it will now report download and upload speeds;
• it will require broadband providers to report the number of subscribers by Census Tract, broken down by speed tier and technology type (i.e. cable, DSL, fiber, etc.). Note that in the old days, providers could get away with saying they served a particular ZIP code if there was at least one subscriber in that ZIP code.

So what’s still missing?

Reporting just how much Americans pay per megabit. Other countries already report how much people pay per megabit. That goes to the heart of how affordable broadband is in one’s region. It is also a measure of how much competition exists. Indeed, Commissioner Adelstein criticized the FCC’s inability to include this information in its reporting requirements. Is the FCC afraid of showing on paper the reality — that there is very little broadband competition in the US? Wouldn’t that kind of data begin ringing alarm bells at the headquarters of the antitrust authorities, just a few months after the mega-telecom mergers that have created a beast called AT&T?

It’s time for people to lobby the FCC to include price per megabit in its statistics.

FCC Broadband Report – old style

The FCC published its most recent “state of the US broadband” report (where 200 Kbps is still the threshold) and it’s worth a read because there are very interesting little tidbits, such as this one: out of the 69,556,081 lines that deliver over 200 Kbps in both directions, only 1.4 million deliver more than 25 Mbps (about 2%).

Download the FCC “old style” broadband report here.