The Federal Communications Commission on March 14 voted that the definition of broadband was outdated, raising the threshold from 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds to 100/20 Mbps.
It’s the first time the agency has raised speed requirements in nearly a decade, and it’s something FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel has been pushing since at least 2015, when she argued, “I think our new threshold, frankly, it should be 100 Mbps. I think anything less than that shortchanges our children, our future and our new digital economy.”
2015 was the last time the FCC raised the standard, when it raised the minimum required speeds from 4/1Mbps to 25/3Mbps. At the time, 55 million Americans did not have access to 25/3 Mbps speeds.
“This fix is long overdue,” Rosenworcel said in a statement (PDF) issued March 14. “It aligns us with pandemic legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the work of our colleagues in other agencies. It also helps us better identify the extent to which low-income neighborhoods and rural communities are underserved.”
According to the latest FCC data (PDF) from December 2022, “45 million Americans lack access to 100/20 Mbps landline service and 35/3 Mbps 5G-NR mobile service.”
The new definition of broadband could affect how state and federal funding is used to expand broadband services. Federal law requires the FCC to determine whether “advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely manner” and to “take immediate action to accelerate deployment.”
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This “advanced telecommunications capability” is now four times faster than it was the day before. With this higher standard, the FCC can take regulatory action to force Internet providers to expand access to underserved areas.
The FCC voted 3-2 to approve the new standard, with the two Republican commissioners dissenting. By 2021, then-FCC Chairman Ajit Pai stated that the 25/3Mbps standard “enables users to create and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics and video telecommunications.”
In an age of video conferencing and smart homes, the current FCC decided that this was no longer true. Zooming, for example, requires upload speeds of 3 Mbps or higher. The FCC definition takes into account the speeds delivered to your home. Because most devices are connected via Wi-Fi, the actual speeds they get aren’t that fast. CNET’s extensive testing of Wi-Fi routers has found that Wi-Fi generally delivers about half the speed of a wired connection. In many cases, the difference is even more pronounced.
The FCC also set a long-term goal to raise the standard to 1,000 Mbps download and 500 Mbps upload speeds. This may be more speed than most people need right now, but it conforms to an often-cited rule in the Internet industry called Nielsen’s law, which states that an Internet user’s connection speed of high rises by roughly 50% each year, doubling every 21 months — an observation that has held true since 1983.
Currently, the average internet speed in the US is 242/31 Mbps, compared to 198/23 Mbps a year ago. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which virtual reality and smart home applications drive massive increases in bandwidth needs. But for now, the FCC is making sure everyone can at least make video calls.
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