The FCC released a report yesterday that said the new definition for what they consider to be “broadband” is now 4 megabits per second of download speed, and 1 megabit per second upload speed. Under the new definition there are 24 million people in America who don’t have broadband. To put that into some perspective, that’s the population of the state of Texas, or the population of New York combined with the country of Finland. How about them apples?
I highlight this story because America is going to start dishing out millions of dollars to companies who are willing to invest in providing broadband access to citizens who don’t have access to such services. Wireless technology is a fantastic way of bringing said access, versus burying wires. Now granted, burying fiber optic cables is a brilliant idea, and recently the country of Australia promised to bring a fiber optic connection to each and every one of the country’s 21 million residents in a project that’s going to take a decade to complete and is estimated to cost $31 billion, but America just doesn’t have that type of ambition. Plus it’s almost 15x the size of Australia by population.
Back to wireless, remember the interview I did with Frank Miller, the CTO of BendBroadband? He runs an HSPA+ network that services rural parts of Central Oregon. Frank says that deploying HSPA+ versus cable was an easy choice to make since it chopped 60% off the cost of building out the network. Should companies who want to deploy broadband using wireless technology get preferential treatment?
Here in Finland, as well as many other parts of Europe, there are people who don’t even bother getting traditional ADSL or cable broadband as a USB wireless modem plugged into the side of their laptop gives them what they want: Facebook, YouTube and Spotify. Will the same thing ever occur in America? It’s hard to say. With LTE, currently only being deployed by Verizon, AT&T, and now LightSquared, the low latency plus the crazy download speeds should provide a wireless experience comparable to a wired broadband connection. Should they get money from the government for building out a wireless network?