Hey FCC: 200 Kbps Isn't 'Broadband'

Somebody in halls of Congress is finally putting the heat on the FCC to change its laughably archaic 200 kbps definition of broadband.

Members of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Internet introduced a new bill Thursday -- the Broadband Census of America Act -- that calls for the government's definition of "high speed internet" to mean services providing at least 2 Mbps of bandwidth. That's a 10-fold increase from the FCC's current definition.

By setting the bar so low, the FCC lets big U.S. ISPs like AT&T off the hook when it comes to increasing the capacity of their broadband offerings. It also makes it easy for the big ISPs to deliver sub-300 kbps connections to rural and poor America, then claim they're doing their part to close the Digital Divide. They're not.

The FCC has always been tight with the telecom industry, and this is just another example. When big phone companies are forced to invest in their network infrastructure to improve capacity, they usually get punished by Wall Street. Yet tax dollars helped build those big networks, so shouldn't our representatives hold big service providers to reasonable performance standards?

The FCC's definition of broadband also makes it appear that the U.S. is leading the world in broadband penetration. If you count the millions of DSL and wireless broadband users with sub-500 kbps connections, the U.S. indeed does look competitive globally. Set the broadband threshold at 2 mbps or even 1 mbps, and the U.S. begins to look like a broadband backwater behind countries like Japan, Korea and Germany.

A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in April that U.S. had dropped from 12th to 15th place in broadband penetration among industrialized countries. The International Telecommunications Union also rates the U.S. 15th in the world.

Only when the FCC gets real on its definitions can we start closing the "broadband gap."