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Broadband: What's in a Word?

200 Kbs is Not Broadband This blog by Om Malik (See Pundits and Blogs) prompted me to go back to the Glossary of Wireless Terms and add a definition for "broadband" - what an oversight! But this is a hotly debated topic, it turns out. Those who provide access to the Internet that is faster than dial up (> 56Kbs) would seek to claim the title of broadband, yet their service is so slow as to make downloading videos, for instance, an interminable process - hardly broadband.

In countries like Korea and Japan, very high speeds are becoming commonplace (>10 Mbs), but we lag here in the US. This article E-Commerce News: Technology: Group Claims US Inflating Broadband Growth Figures claims that the definition of broadband is being kept low to make us look better (or less worse) than we really are. Where the FCC claims anything above 200 Kbs as broadband, out in the real world the test is being able to handle video over the Internet.

Personally, I define broadband as so fast that I hardly notice it working in the background. When my cable modem bogs down, as it does in the evening, it hardly feels like broadband to me, but I have to admit, itis still a far cry from the dial up I had five years ago. Still, we should not be looking back to draw a comparison and marvel at today's speeds (the E-Commerce article reaches back to 13 years ago, when broadband was 45 Kbs), but forward to what other countries are doing, and to what is possible. I vote for moving the standard up, and creating some distinction in terms: there is a big gulf between some ILECs 200 Kbs and Korea's 10 Mbs, 50 times faster!

Posted on August 03, 2005 at 07:27 AM

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