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Last updated: Thursday, September 3, 2009

In response to the Federal Communications Commission’s request last month for comments about a definition of the term “broadband,” key industry players have advised the FCC to tread carefully. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, for example, is cautioning against incorporating substantive requirements regarding speed, price or openness. “The commission should not use the process of defining ‘broadband’ as a vehicle for imposing substantive obligations on providers of broadband services,” said NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg. “Rather, as Congress did in defining terms like ‘cable service,’ ‘telecommunications service,’ and ‘information service,’ the commission should adopt a more generic definition that focuses on the core functionality.” Metrics and Measurements Congress has defined broadband as any technology with the capacity to transmit data to enable a subscriber to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics and video. The FCC wants to redefine the term with a higher degree of precision in order to complete its recommendations to Congress on the implementation of a national broadband plan, said Carlos Kirjner, a senior FCC adviser. “If we want to decide who has and who does not have broadband, we actually need to agree on what we mean by broadband,” Kirjner said. The FCC has noted that the advertised throughput rates of service providers generally differ from actual rates, are not uniformly measured, and place different constraints over different technologies. The FCC hopes to specify the general form, characteristics and performance that broadband should include. “To ensure that consumers have a clear and accurate view of what they are getting for their money, we need to decide what the important metrics are and how to measure them,” Kirjner said. However, the NCTA and Comcast disagree, saying there is no effective way to control all these factors in every instance. “The ‘provisioned’ speed is still the most useful metric in evaluating whether any…

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