Broadband Challenges Include Expectations vs. ISP Reality

Broadband challenges include consumer expectations matching reality, NARUC heard Monday in Denver. Opening a panel and riffing on Tom Cruise in Top Gun saying “I feel the need for speed,” moderator Chris Nelson said broadband perceptions “can go in a lot of different directions.” The speeds people think they get, what they need, what they get at various times during the day, and other factors all vary, said Nelson. “When we go to buy broadband, we don’t really know what we’re getting; we know what we’re being told we’re being sold,” added Nelson, South Dakota Public Utilities Commission chairman. Broadband has challenges, said Ookla Executive Vice President-Smart Cities Bryan Darr. FCC form 477 data “can be quite out of date,” he said. Generally, “there have not been good, consistent data sources” used by governments, said Darr, whose company provides the Speedtest app for measuring broadband characteristics. Nelson, in an interview afterward, agreed with Ookla’s Darr that the issue of broadband speeds will diminish as overall ISP speeds increase. “As these speeds ramp up, this will be less of an issue,” Nelson told us. He said he doesn’t have a stance on whether the FCC should lift its 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream threshold for what's considered broadband. The priority should be that those who can’t get 25/3 Mbps should be able to buy such service, Nelson said: That’s “who we [should] focus on first.”