No matter what the outcome in November’s presidential election, about a year from now, the FCC will be anticipating the arrival of a new Chairman. I present the following challenge to the next Chairman, whoever he/she may be: make the US last in the world rankings of per capita broadband adoption. What?! Stay with me for a sec.
The FCC defines “broadband” as any access technology providing at least 200kbps in one direction. This standard was appauling when it was introduced nearly a decade ago;FN1 it is simply laughable now. Shouldn’t this standard evolve at least a little bit over time? Consider for a second Moore’s Law on computing per unit cost, which stipulates that preformance roughly doubles every two years.FN2 So, between January 1999 and January 2009, the price preformance of the electronics which enable a broadband connection should have increased by a factor of 32. Thus, a resonable standard for broadband today would be 6.4 Mbps (200kbps X 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 = 6,400kbps). Let’s say I missed my guess by a bit and an appropriate standard is 5 megs. (Neither a particularly high threshold and about what I get at my home in a small suburb outside of Bonn, Germany.) In that same decade, the US rank in the world in terms of broadband adpotion has fallen from 3rd to 15th to 20th, by some counts.
Insight: According to the FCC’s most recent data, in December 2006 there were 82.5 million broadband lines in the US.FN3 Using the 5 meg standard this number would drop to roughtly 11.5 million lines.FN4 The effect of reporting this as the number of broadband lines in the US would be to be to drop the US to a per capita broadband adoption rate of Slovakia or Mexico. Only then would it be undeniable that the US is falling behind in the adoption of next generation networks. And, only then would the FCC have the imperative necessary to take the steps which other nations are taking and “encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans,” per the FCC’s mandate.
FN4: This is a bit of a fudge factor, but good enough for the back of the envelope. Since the FCC only reports lines with speeds between 2.5 megs and 10 megs, I assumed that only 1/4 of the 34.7 million lines in this category were greater than 5 megs – I eyeballed this from the skew of distribution.
