{"id":9057,"date":"2015-02-02T07:37:36","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T12:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=9057"},"modified":"2015-02-02T07:37:36","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T12:37:36","slug":"why-you-should-care-that-the-fcc-is-trying-to-redefine-broadband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/why-you-should-care-that-the-fcc-is-trying-to-redefine-broadband\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Care That The FCC Is Trying To Redefine Broadband"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why You Should Care That The FCC Is Trying To Redefine Broadband<\/a><\/h1>\n

(from Gizmodo<\/a><\/strong><\/span>)<\/p>\n

\n

In the wake of the ongoing net neutrality argument<\/a>, another equally important squabble between regulators and telecoms companies has been overlooked. The FCC is trying to redefine ‘broadband’ as “internet which is actually fast enough to use”, and telecoms companies don’t like that one little bit.<\/p>\n

According to current FCC policy, ‘broadband’ means 4Mbps down\/1Mbps up. That’s been the definition since 2010, when it was upgraded<\/a> from a (hilariously slow) 200Kbps. However, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently outlined a plan to update that definition, to 25Mbps down\/3 up. It’s a position supported by a number of companies, including Netflix; but unsurprisingly, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) is dead against the plan.<\/p>\n

As arbitrary as the 25\/3 numbers sound, they’re not picked totally out of thin air: they’re based on a clause in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which states that broadband must “enable users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology”.<\/p>\n

Based on that criteria, broadband should be fairly easy to define. Netflix publishes<\/a> a handy little chart of how fast your internet has to be in order to stream video from its servers. To get any kind of buffer-free service, they recommend a 1.5Mbps connection, with 5Mbps recommended for HD, and 25 for 4K content.<\/p>\n

Going by those numbers, saying that 25Mbps is the minimum standard for broadband seems a little excessive. 4K content is a rare beast on the internet<\/a>, and the necessary equipment for watching it \u2014 a 4K TV \u2014 is rarer still (although, give it five years and we’ll see how things change).<\/p>\n

But an alternative argument for a 25Mbps standard, put forward by policy group Public Knowledge<\/a>, is that a single internet connection is commonly shared between several individuals. If, say, three members of a five-person household are streaming Netflix at the same time, you’d need a minimum of 15Mbps in order for everything to work seamlessly \u2014 and that’s assuming that the Wi-Fi network isn’t causing any slowdown…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire Gizmodo article here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why You Should Care That The FCC Is Trying To Redefine Broadband (from Gizmodo) In the wake of the ongoing net neutrality argument, another equally important squabble between regulators and telecoms companies has been overlooked. The FCC is trying to redefine ‘broadband’ as “internet which is actually fast enough to use”, and telecoms companies don’t like that one\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1433,1674],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9058,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9057\/revisions\/9058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}