What is broadband?

Among the many tasks before the federal agencies administering $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds is defining broadband for the purposes of distributing those funds.

Defining broadband has long been a thorn in the side of universal broadband advocates: Set the bar too low and you end up with a bandwidth divide; set the bar too high and it’s considered unrealistic or prohibitively expensive for rural areas. The perfect becomes the enemy of the good.

In a white paper back in 2005, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers called on Congress to make 1 Gb/s symmetrical broadband ubiquitous. California once called for “1 Gb/s or bust,” though the state eventually opted for “bust.”

Blair Levin, a Stifel Nicolaus analyst and advisor to the Obama administration on broadband matters, said long before there was a stimulus package that when broadband is defined for the purpose of making it ubiquitous, each provider will argue for a speed that disqualifies their competitors. But the growing volume of public comments on this question is starting to reveal that defining broadband may not be a simple matter of picking a speed. Some commenters argue for different speed minimums for different technologies. Some argue for symmetrical speeds while others don’t. Some say other metrics such as latency are as important as speed. Some argue that the speed minimum must continually increase over time. 

Defining broadband for the purpose of awarding stimulus funds should be much easier than defining it in the longer term for the purpose of achieving ubiquitous broadband. Stimulus grants are awarded on a competitive basis, so it’s best to set the bar low for what constitutes broadband because awards will still be chosen based on which projects deliver the fastest speeds to the greatest number of people.

But as the FCC consults with the NTIA and the RUS — the two groups administering broadband stimulus funds — on some of these matters, will the FCC, when it crafts its own universal broadband policy, feel bound by the definition of broadband created for stimulus efforts? I hope not.

E-mail me at ed.gubbins@penton.com.