FCC INCREASES BROADBAND SPEED BENCHMARK
The Commission's Report, issued pursuant to section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, raises the Commission's benchmark for high-speed fixed broadband to download speeds of 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 20 megabits per second.
When will we see this increase?
Comments
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Don't get too excited about this... note the wording. We had a lot of hype with their last revision because people didn't pay attention to the language. Have already seen a few articles/blogs that are missing it this time around too.
"raises the Commission’s benchmark for high-speed fixed broadband to download speeds of 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 20 megabits per second "
As a nation, we have been mostly operating in "underserved broadband" space (less than 100/20) for around a decade. That is not a new designation... neither is this "benchmark". (They are doubling down on a previously stated goal)
Broadband is still just a wideband transmission... a wide range of frequencies capable of handling multiple transmissions (ie, not 56k over POTS)
High Speed is still greater than the average.
Thankfully, our nation's mean may be above the 25/3 mark now... but the dataset they mentioned in that announcement likely is not a pretty picture.
They did not mention the 25/3 threshold data point from that December 2022 report in that announcement... but the Fall 2022 data point they have cited before was only 68.9% subscribed at 25/3 or higher even though 95.6% of households had access to a service at that level or higher.
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate their effort to try to spur the markets forward some more... but they have been pushing that 100/20 goal since at least 2015 (though, to be fair... it was a soft target then).
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Any increase is better seeing they hold a monopoly in my area for Broadband. I just wish there was fiber available where I live. I would switch in a heartbeat.
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Hopefully the high-split changes in the queue for 2024 will lead to better upstream ratings down the line.
That 11/12 mbps up paired with the 300 down tier is so out of whack. It is a good downstream rating for most... but that upstream is just bad for so many people.
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