The United States is land of innovation until corporations gets their hands on it. The internet was one such innovation that has enabled us to share data at near light speed. However, because ISPs control how we connect to it, those speeds become more of a dream than a reality. The FCC has decided to change up some rules to give people the speed they need.
Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued new rules stating that the “broadband” standard now sits at 100 Mbps downloads and 20 Mbps uploads. These numbers haven’t changed since 2015 when “broadband” was classified as 25 Mbps / 3 Mbps.
In a report, the FCC highlighted many of the US’ infrastructure pain points. Ultimately, the agency came to the conclusion that ISPs are not rolling out broadband quickly enough. This is especially true for folks who live in rural areas and on Tribal lands.
These gaps in deployment are not closing rapidly enough.”
excerpt from FCC report
When speaking of fixed terrestrial broadband service, it hasn’t even been deployed to 24 million Americans. This includes 28 percent of people in rural areas and 23 percent of those on Tribal lands. With mobile, nine percent of US citizens (including 36 percent in rural and 20 percent on Tribal lands) don’t have great 5G coverage of at least 35 Mbps / 3 Mbps.
The goal of the FCC is to try and bump everyone up to 1 Gbps / 500 Mbps “to give stakeholders a collective goal towards which to strive.” While the FCC can’t necessarily force the ISPs to increase speeds, what this does do is restrict how the ISPs market their services.
But something tells me we’re going to hear new buzzwords coming out real soon.
Source: Engadget
