FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

Eric Brunner-Williams brunner at nic-naa.net
Wed Aug 26 16:59:43 UTC 2009


In the applications I wrote earlier this month for BIP (Rural Utilities 
Services, USDA) and BTOP (NTIA, non-rural) infrastructure, for Maine's 
2nd, I was keenly aware that broadband hasn't taken off as a pervasive, 
if not universal service in rural areas of the US.

I don't think the speed metric is the metric that will make non-adoption 
in sparce clustered demographics distinguishable from adoption in denser 
demographics. I suspect that issues like symmetry of state signaling, 
latency, jitter, ... metrics that resemble what I looked for from MPI 
runs when benchmarking parallel systems, will characterize applications 
that may be distinguishable from the adoption, market penetration, 
renewal criteria from the applications that for reasons I can only 
conjecture, the standard "triple play" killer apps, which simply aren't 
driving broadband (whatever that is) adoption in rural areas. And no, I 
don't know what those better-than-triple-play-killer-apps-in-suburbia are.

My meta-point is that I suspect there are two "broadbands", one where 
triple-play sells recurring subscriber drops, and one where it doesn't, 
and for the later a better definition would be more useful than a 
definition that reads (in fine print) "not available here".

Eric


Luke Marrott wrote:
> I read an article on DSL Reports the other day (
> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCC-Please-Define-Broadband-104056), in
> which the FCC has a document requesting feedback on the definition of
> Broadband.
>
> What are your thoughts on what the definition of Broadband should be going
> forward? I would assume this will be the standard definition for a number of
> years to come.
>
> Thanks.
>
>   





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