GAO Would Like The FCC To Explain Why It Still Maintains A Pathetic, Dated Definition Of ‘Broadband’
The US has always had a fairly pathetic definition of broadband."
Originally defined as anything over 200 kbps in either direction, the definition was updated in 2010 to a pathetic 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. It was updated again in 2015 by the FCC to a better, but still arguably pathetic 25 Mbps downstream, 3 Mbps upstream. As we noted then, the broadband industry whined incessantly about having any higher standards, as it would only further highlight industry failure, the harm of monopolization, and a lack of competition.
Unfortunately for them, public pressure has only grown to push the US definition of broadband even higher. Especially as the government prepares to spend an historic $42 billion in broadband subsidies as part of the recently passed infrastructure bill.
In 2021, a small coalition of Senators wrote the Biden administration to recommend that 100 Mbps in both directions become the new baseline. After some lobbying by cable and wireless companies (whose upstream speeds couldn't match that standard), FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel conceded the agency should probably adopt a new standard: 100 Mbps downstream 20 Mbps up.
Not much has happened since.
Enter the General Accountability Office (GAO), which last week once again issued a report pointing out how the FCC has done a terrible job keeping the definition of broadband updated in modern era. The report also (too politely) notes the FCC hasn't really bothered to explain to the public why it clings so desperately to the dated 25/3 standard:
Our analysis of notices of inquiry and deployment reports shows that FCC has not consistently communicated from year to year how it reviews the broadband speed benchmark and determines whether to update it."
That reason, of course, is regulatory capture. During the Trump era, the FCC was little more than a rubber stamp to the nation's biggest telecom monopolies, which have fought against higher standards knowing full well it will only highlight limited competition, patchy availability, and slow speeds.
During the Biden era, FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel has talked a good game about bridging the digital divide," but has also been generally averse to meaningfully criticizing those same monopolies. Efforts to appoint a popular reformer to the agency (Gigi Sohn), were demolished by a bipartisan coalition of corrupt Senators, who (surprise!) also pandered to giants like AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and Verizon.
That's left the FCC (quite intentionally) without the voting majority needed to overcome the agency's Republican commissioners, who consistently vote in lockstep with the interests of the telecom lobby.
As a result, the FCC has become increasingly irrelevant in the consumer protection arena or when it comes to defining meaningful competitive and deployment standards. That's shifted the onus to state and local regulators, who may also be incompetent and corrupt depending on where you live.
This is, as they say, why we can't have nice things. And why the U.S. consistently ranks somewhere in the middle of the pack when it comes to next-generation broadband. We not only lack consistent competition in the U.S. telecom sector, we lack regulators with anything even vaguely resembling a backbone, even on the most rudimentary of issues deemed controversial by industry.