The Definition of Broadband August 20th, 2009 by Carlos Kirjner - Senior Advisor to the Chairman on Broadband Today the FCC is releasing a Public Notice, or PN, on the best way to define broadband. As the PN points out, much of the recent debate tends to center on throughput speeds. Engineers know that these numbers by themselves are most often misleading. For example, in most cases the "advertised" throughput speed has a tenuous relation with the actually delivered speed, which will actually vary over time, depending on the application, the server, and many other factors. Both OfCom, which is the communications regulator in the UK, and Akamai have published studies based on meaningful numbers of end-user samples that show large the difference between advertised and actual rates. In addition, for many important applications, such as voice and videoconferencing, other performance metrics, such as latency, are crucial. But why do we care? Why do we need to think about broadband carefully? Several reasons: - If we want to decide who has and who does not have broadband, we actually need to agree on what we mean by broadband. - If we want to decide who can take advantage of one type of application or another, we need to know what they are actually getting today, and what is the gap between that and what they actually need to get - If we need to know how much it would cost the country to enable all or a subset of its households and businesses to take advantage of one application or another, we need to know what the gap is between where we are and where we want to be. - If we want to ensure that consumers have a clear and accurate view of what they are getting for their money, we need to decide what are the important metrics, and how to measure them. And the list goes on. Bottom line: this is important. We want your input. We need your input. If you are an academic, a service provider engineer, a consumer, or anyone else with a stake in the outcome of the Plan, please read the PN, think about it, and share your best thinking. It looks like a document written by lawyers to lawyers, but in there there are some important questions for the country. Reference : http://blog.broadband.gov/?entryId=10679