FCC provides new definitions of broadband

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/25/2008 - 10:01

The FCC has finally released new definitions of broadband.

• First Generation: 200 Kbps up to 768 Kbps
• Basic Broadband: 768 Kbps to 1.5 megabits per second
• 1.5 Mbps to to less than 3 Mbps
• 3 Mbps to less than 6 Mbps
• 6 Mbps to less than 10 Mbps
• 10 Mbps to less than 25 Mbps
• 25 Mbps to less than 100.0 Mbps
• 100 Mbps and beyond

This is a major improvement over the old definition of "200 kilobits" as broadband. By this old definition, the country has very high levels of broadband penetration, but made the U.S. the laughingstock of the rest of the world. In much of Europe, residential broadband tends to be north of 40+ MEGABITS, or about 200 times more capacity than the FCC definition.

The graded scale is useful because it can provided benchmarks to measure progress in a community or region. If the FCC has provided targets, that would have been even better. For example, a ten year target could be to have 90% of businesses and homes in the "100 Mbps and beyond" category, and indeed, U.S. community broadband projects like the one in Danville, Virginia are deploying "100 Mbps and beyond" today.