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The United States Federal Communications Commission has today passed a vote to redefine the minimum broadband download speed to 25 Mbps, and the minimum upload speed to 3 Mbps. The previous 4 Mbps/1 Mbps standard set in 2010, was declared outdated and was in the view of the commission “failing to keep pace with today’s advanced, high-quality voice, data, graphics and video offerings“.
17 percent of all Americans (55 million people) lack access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps service and a whopping 53 percent of rural Americans (22 million people) lack access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps. Looking at the map the FCC have released to show where the problem areas are, it is pretty clear that, while the east coast of the US is pretty well served, there are a lot of states that seemly lack almost any access to the new definition of broadband.
This decision should mean greater choice and faster speeds, for both rural and urban Americans who want broadband and is a pretty large win for consumers. Before today's vote ISPs could advertise “broadband” as any package that could achieve speeds of at least 4 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up.
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted “Let's stop dreaming small & instead dream big. Good that @FCC raising #broadband threshold to 25 Mbps–but we should aim higher: 100 Mbps.” Having broadband reclassified as 100 Mbps would be a huge win for consumers and would help the US move even higher in worldwide broadband rankings, but would also put a lot of pressure on ISPs to perform huge network upgrades right across the country and would make the map above almost totally blue, leaving large portions of the US without any “broadband” as the FCC would have it defined.
The US is actually doing quite well in Akamai Technologies worldwide internet speed ranking this year, having moved up from position 31 in 2013 to position 11 in 2014, just below Ireland, with an average speed of 10.5 Mbps. Still quite far from the leader, South Korea where the average speed is 23.6 Mbps!
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KitGuru Says: I'm all for faster broadband speeds for everyone and if this is how the FCC can achieve this in the US then it seems like a good thing. Here in the UK we have a lot more competition, but our infrastructure still needs a lot of work to get high speed broadband out to everyone possible.
Source: FCC
Somebody talk to Cable One. Their max upload speed is 5…
And here I am stuck on less than 1.
Here in India, we got the fastest Broadband of all at 512Kbps(64KBps)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Still buffering for 360p videos.
Who cares, just some legal naming of “broadband” I don’t care if you call it internet, or broadband, or whatever, just don’t lie about the service and speeds you are offering, which i already believe there are laws against false advertisement.
It is dialup, ISDN, EDGE, HSPA, HSPA+, LTE, cable/copper, wimax, satilite, DSL, ADSL, FTTN, FTTH, just say what it is. The term Braudband is retarded and is too BROAD of a range of things. In reality, it used ot mean anything over .5mbs, then it was like 1, now it is 4, and soon to be 25. just a BS term that doesn’t actually mean anything.
why all this bragging about speed, only makes us british jealous, I’ve got 2mbps download ….. on a good day ..somewhat shy of BT’s promised 20 .
hey bragging rights here …got 100% more than you ….just
here in Australia we get >10mbps ._.
i’m really not bragging but I’ve just upgraded from 200 to 240Mbps 🙂 winning
I have 300/20 service and I’m not bragging either! 😉
Don’t feel bad, you’ll never be satisfied. I have 300/20 service and I want something faster!
high 5s* nice – i’m in dublin , IE with UPC, who is your provider and location?
Got ya beat, 1.25gbps up AND down, for only 74$/mo 🙂
State provider and location too
Austn, TX, AT&T.
They claim only 1gbps, but host a tor relay it always stays above 1gbps, closer to 1.25gbps same thing for torrents 🙂
There is a monthly 4tb limit though…
basically stops me from hosting a service or running a tor relay at full speed 24/7
“doesn’t actually mean anything” nothing means anything except what we make it mean. In the case of the term “broadband” it now means any internet connection over 25Mbps, since consumers have been trained/taught that broadband is the best they’ll start demanding broadband. Basically it forces ISPs to adhere to the new broadband standards, or have customers lose faith and switch over to other companies. This is good plain and simple there’s not even any political maneuvering that i can sense like i do with 99% of other laws and legal terms (im paranoid and very distrustful FYI)
+1