The Federal Communications Commission gets to define what constitutes “Broadband” in the USA and the absurd current minimum rate of 4 Megabits per second doesn’t cut it. 25Mbps is more like it, and that’s what the draft of an upcoming FCC report is calling for as the new minimum. Even that is absurdly slow compared to many places in the world. Of course US Internet Service Providers need to serve large spans of sparsely populated rural areas. But still.
And bear in mind that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is the former head lobbyist for America’s ISPs, and this overdue upgrade may be his feeble attempt to distract us from the fight to regulate Internet access as a public utility instead of the highly profitable near-monopoly it has been up to now.
More:
“Only 25Mbps and up will qualify as broadband under new FCC definition,” Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica
Update:
“Obama Pushes FCC To Expand Broadband Access,” Krishnadev Calamur, NPR
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