In a speech made yesterday before the U.S House of Representatives Committe on Small Business, FCC boss Tom Wheeler declared that the United States should stop funding the deployment of any speeds slower than 10 Mbps downstream. The speech is part of Wheeler's recent push to raise the minimum broadband definition from 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up -- something that has been greeted with a significant amount of hand-wringing from incumbent ISPs.
In his
speech yesterday, Wheeler put forth his case that if you're going to subsidize broadband deployment, you should at least get speeds in tune with modern consumer needs.
Ars Technica notes that Wheeler hammered this point home in a subsequent Q&A on Capitol Hill.
"When 60 percent of the Internet’s traffic at prime time is video, and it takes 4 or 5Mbps to deliver video, a 4Mbps connection isn’t exactly what’s necessary in the 21st century," said Wheeler.
"And when you have half a dozen different devices, wireless and other connected devices in a home that are all going against that bandwidth, it’s not enough. What we are saying is we can’t make the mistake of spending the people’s money, which is what Universal Service is, to continue to subsidize something that’s subpar."
There's a very long, dark, unspoken history in the telecom industry that involves
throwing billions of dollars in subsidies and tax cuts at incumbent phone companies, then turning the other cheek when they fail to deliver.
New Jersey and
Pennsylvania are just two of many examples, and nobody has even bothered to truly audit how deep that particular rabbit hole goes. Not throwing more money at ISPs for speeds that can barely be called broadband is probably the very least the FCC can do.