FCC Broadband Standard: Democratic Commissioner Pushes Back Against Slower Broadband Speeds

Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission, proposed lowering the country’s standard for broadband internet speeds—a change that a Democratic FCC commissioner is pushing back against.

Under a proposal put forth by Chairman Pai, the broadband standard in the country would drop from 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download speed and 3Mbps upload speed down to 10Mbps download speed and 1Mbps upload speed.

Jessica Rosenworcel, a commissioner occupying one of the two Democratic seats on the five person commission, took issue with the proposal. "This is crazy. Lowering standards doesn't solve our broadband problems," she wrote on Twitter.

Rosenworcel, who was reconfirmed to the commission after her tenure lapsed earlier this year, has been vocal in the past about increasing the broadband standard. "We invented the internet. We can do audacious things if we set big goals, and I think our new threshold, frankly, should be 100Mbps. I think anything short of that shortchanges our children, our future, and our new digital economy," she said in 2015.

The current standard for broadband in the U.S.—the benchmark of 25Mbps down and 3Mpbs up—was set by former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in 2015 during the administration of President Barack Obama.

The decision came after the FCC found 80 percent of Americans had access to internet that met the standard and was designed to urge internet service providers to get the remaining 20 percent of the country up to speed.

That task still has not been accomplished, according to the FCC’s most recent Broadband Progress Report —though significant gains have been made in the short time since the standard was set. Just 10 percent of all Americans currently lack access to broadband internet. Those figures are significantly higher for people in rural areas, with as many as 40 percent still unable to get internet that achieves the broadband standard.

Under Chairman Pai’s proposal, the percentage of people with broadband internet access would increase—but not because access has improved. Instead, the bar for broadband would be lowered to a point where many ISPs could say they provide high speed internet to all or most of their customers.

Pai’s plan was first raised in a Notice of Inquiry that sought comment on whether the FCC should change the standards used for its annual analysis of broadband deployment. Doing so would allow the FCC to step back from previous conclusions made by the commission that found broadband deployment was lacking.

The suggestion is a continuation of Pai’s apparent intention to redefine broadband. The chairman, appointed by President Donald Trump, has also suggested access to a smartphone and mobile broadband networks could be considered a suitable substitute for cable or fiber internet.

The standard for mobile broadband are speeds of 10 Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads, the same standard raised by Pai. A recent survey from OpenSignal found T-Mobile had the fastest network on average with a download rate of 16Mbps, short of the current standard for wired broadband. One of the four major carriers in the U.S., Sprint, failed to break the 10Mbps threshold for mobile broadband.

The FCC is accepting public comments on the Notice of Inquiry suggesting lowering the broadband standard through Oct. 6.