The term “broadband” is often used in marketing materials, but its actual definition has changed over the years. But now, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a new report on what should be considered “broadband.”
The new standard specifies download speeds of 100 Mbps and upload speeds of 20 Mbps, with speeds last defined in 2015. At the time, the FTC mandated download speeds of 25 Mbps and upload speeds of 3 Mbps. That’s how far we’ve come.
You may be wondering where these numbers come from, but according to the FTC, they are “based on standards currently used in multiple federal and state programs,” as well as “consumer usage patterns” and “what is actually available.”
According to Speedtest.net, the average download speed in the United States is 256 Mbps, which is eight times faster than a decade ago. In case you were wondering, this puts the country at 12th place in the world for internet speeds. As Toms Hardware points out, streaming movies on Netflix requires 15 Mbps or more to play 4K content, while Nvidia GeForce Now requires 35 Mbps to play 1080p game streams.
However, the FTC report concluded that an investigation conducted in December 2022 found that the country currently has some shortcomings in fast internet access.
“The report concludes that advanced telecommunications capabilities are not being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner based on the total number of Americans, Americans in rural areas, and those living on tribal lands who lack advanced telecommunications capabilities, and that the pace of closing of these gaps in deployment Not fast enough.”
Not only that, the report also states that it has a long-term goal for “broadband”, eventually reaching 1 Gbps download speed and 500 Mbps upload speed. It did not provide a timetable for achieving this, but depending on when the broadband report was last provided, it could be many years before another update is provided.
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