10 Mbps Broadband Speed, Signaled by Draft FCC NOI, Called Sufficient for Many Uses
Broadband download speeds of 10 Mbps, as a draft inquiry signals the FCC wants to be the new benchmark instead of 4 Mbps (CD June 4 p1), were described by experts in interviews as sufficient for most residential Internet uses. A notice of inquiry circulating at the FCC asks about raising the benchmark to 10 Mbps, which some called the new 1 Mbps, although others questioned if the threshold needs to increase.
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Almost all U.S. residents whose households are passed by cable ISPs can get at least 10 Mbps, though many don’t buy service that fast and some don’t buy any broadband, said those who study such products. For telcos in areas where there is fast DSL service or fiber, such speeds are available, they said. In rural areas, speeds, particularly for DSL, may not always hit 10 Mbps, said the experts, some who have worked for ISPs.
Continually raising the number for what’s considered broadband makes it easier for the FCC to find broadband isn’t being deployed on a timely or reasonable basis, letting it invoke Communications Act Section 706(b) authority over net neutrality, said Phoenix Center President Larry Spiwak. “All you have to do is keep raising the speed, and it allows you to continually invoke 706.” Even absent a finding that broadband isn’t being deployed as the act calls for, the FCC could have other statutory authority to pursue net neutrality rules and also use the USF to pay for broadband deployments, said industry officials in the last part of this occasional series on the FCC Section 706 report (CD June 9 p9). An agency spokesman declined to comment Monday.
Online video watching, Web gaming and telecommuting from home all require downloads of 10-15 Mbps, said ABI Research analyst Sam Rosen. “If you have any of those use cases in your home,” such speeds are “a nice middle ground where you have the benefits of broadband without overly constraining the penetration you might reach” by what is possible with satellite broadband and copper networks, he said. It’s “economically difficult” to pay for speeds like 10 Mbps in rural areas, where a telco broadband subscriber would need to be close to a central office to get DSL at that speed, unless the household was passed by fiber, said Rosen.
Raising the minimum speed could be viewed as part of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s plans for net neutrality, Spiwak said. It carries other consequences, he said: If the FCC raises the threshold, broadband deployment statistics will likely decrease, providing political hay for critics of Wheeler and President Barack Obama. As of September 2012, the average subscribed speed for all U.S. wireline ISPs was 15.6 Mbps, up 20 percent from the previous year, said the FCC’s latest such tally dated February 2013 (http://fcc.us/XNh7k2).
'Improvement’ or Too Fast?
Considering only 10 Mbps and above to be broadband is “definitely an improvement,” said Thomas Gideon, director-technology of New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. Others including Spiwak and WTA, representing rural telcos, disagreed.
A threshold increase to 10 Mbps “makes more things possible,” said Gideon. The threshold increase would be “just a step” forward, and “could be a stepping stone” toward a broadband-speed index that accounts for the lowest quintile of actual speeds, he said. Many areas on the U.S. coasts have 10 Mbps and above broadband, while that’s not the case for many other areas, where DSL may be more prevalent, he said. “We have a swath in the interior of the country ... where you do see a dropoff, where 10 [Mbps] isn’t going to be as available."
Cable systems pass 93 percent of U.S. households with broadband, said an NCTA spokesman. “Speeds vary as consumer tiers range from single digits to over 500 Mbps. But average speeds are now up to 30 Mbps.” About 91 percent of households can get 10 Mbps or more from a wireline ISP, or 97 percent when wireless broadband is included, said Christopher Yoo, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. That was as of June 30 and according to NTIA data based on state broadband maps, said Yoo. He has said the net neutrality rules remanded to the FCC by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit erred by not taking a case-by-case enforcement tack.
U.S. ISPs continue to increase network speeds, though it’s hard to know whether many choose to buy the higher speeds, said broadband researcher and consultant John Horrigan, who has analyzed Comcast’s Internet Essentials Web program for the poor and before that worked on the FCC National Broadband Plan. Ten Mbps is “going to be a good speed for a household that is doing a lot of streaming and has multiple people using the network quite a bit,” he said. “The applications are being optimized to more and more require higher speeds, so 10 sounds good for a new benchmark.” About 15 percent of U.S. households are passed by fiber, while cable-passed households also could get 10 Mbps or faster, he said. “If you have DSL only, you're a little bit out of luck."
Many DSL providers won’t meet a 10 Mbps minimum speed, possibly discouraging investment in that industry, said Phoenix Center’s Spiwak. That could put rural DSL providers “in a difficult spot,” said WTA Vice President-Government Affairs Derrick Owens. Some areas with DSL could be reclassified as underserved if the threshold goes up, opening them to possible competition under the USF, Owens said. For many rural DSL companies, he said that building infrastructure to increase speeds to a new broadband minimum would be very costly. (jmake@warren-news.com),