FCC: Please Define Broadband > Definition of broadband

Definition of broadband

reply to DrModem
Speed and latency are tough to define because they are statistical and often use resources not under the ISP's direct control. No ISP builds out a non-blocking network able to support worst case customer demand.

Requirement should be written like a service level agreement. Spec will be meet at least xx% of the time.

I think speed should be set somewhat lower, 3000/512 would exclude a lot of existing broadband connections. Once a minimum level is set it ought to be gradually increased year over year.

Latency needs to be defined as a maximum anywhere within the ISP network, since that is what they have control over. There needs to be an additional metric about congestion at Peering points, when ISP traffic is handed off to others.

I disagree that reliability doesn't matter. If I have a 3000/512 connection but can not use it because it is down all the time do I really have a broadband connection? Up time and mean time to repair should be defined statistically. Need to strike a balance to provide baseline expectation to customer, other then nebulous "best effort" while not creating undo hardship for service providers.

Network neutrality should be defined. How much control should ISP have over customer traffic? I'd like to see a clear line of demarcation between carriage and value add services.

/tom

reply to Nick
Well to be fair he did say nearby, but i agree once it crosses an ISP's "borders" the rules change. 3+ I think is a good baseline to start with in rural areas, since a lot of us in the cities can get a lot higher than 3, and it can be delivered by wireless, fiber, dsl, etc etc......

"How do you factor in latency, reliability, and mobility?"" How do usage caps and meters impact the quality of bandwidth delivered and its measurement?"

IMO i dont think that any of these should be a factor as far as defining broadband with the exception of latency within the companies network.

reply to DrModem
1M/512k would be a good starting point for this broadband plan. As the plan is supposedly being designed to get America 100% connected, no need to say much higher at this time. This would have to be the bare bones minimum to be called broadband.
Measured as delivered speeds, not the "up to" crap.
As far as advertised vs delivered speeds for residential customers, must be able to deliver at least 85% of advertised speed 100% of the time. Outages, interruptions, non-delivery must be reasonably compensated for, such as credits on bill.
Caps must be set to allow a consumer to reasonably use their paid for service, OR on a pricing tier plan where customers pick their speed, cap + overage and/or metered charge. If caps/metered usage is in place, customer must reliably be able to check their usage, much like an electric meter on a home, and the system audited on an annual basis to ensure accuracy.

If you don't over sell your equipment's capacity, you wouldn't have the problem. Like I said, maintaining at least 80% of that speed 100% of the time.
The way it is now, they can sell you a 30Mbit/sec plan, but if you only get 6Mbit/s they can tell you to just deal with it as it does say "up to". Not a good business model, but seems to work well for the tel/cable companies.

Caps are caps, and although has no role in the definition of broadband, it would be nice to see some sort of mandate that IF they are to cap/charge per GB, that they must provide a reliable way of checking used bandwith as measured by them.

reply to Nick
The reason you want to use at least some level of latency to keep 500-1k latent services like 3G or satellite as being considered as broadband. Let alone going over your daily monthly cap and being throttled back to sub dial up speeds.

Perhaps you measure your speed and latency to the ISP edge requiring the edge to work at no more than 80% capacity. Speed would be measured at sustained transfer rate over a 30 min period of time.