On Aug 24, 2009, at 9:17 AM, Luke Marrott wrote:
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.
Historically, narrowband was circuit switched (ISDN etc) and broadband was packet switched. Narrowband was therefore tied to the digital signaling hierarchy and was in some way a multiple of 64 KBPS. As the term was used then, broadband delivery options of course included virtual circuits bearing packets, like Frame Relay and ATM. The new services I am hearing about include streamed video to multiple HD TVs in the home. I think I would encourage the FCC to discuss "broadband" to step away from the technology and look at the bandwidth usably delivered (as in "I don't care what the bit rate of the connection at the curb is if the back end is clogged; how much can a commodity TCP session move through the network"). http://tinyurl.com/pgxqzb suggests that the average broadband service worldwide delivers a download rate of 1.5 MBPS; having the FCC assert that the new definition of broadband is that it delivers a usable data rate in excess of 1 MBPS while narrowband delivers less seems reasonable. That said, the US is ~15th worldwide in broadband speed; Belgium, Ireland, South Korea, Taiwan, and the UK seem to think that FTTH that can serve multiple HDTVs simultaneously is normal.