Do you remember Ajit Pai? A former FCC chairman hand-picked by then-President Donald Trump?You know, the guy who was notorious for his drinking? Huge Reese’s coffee cup And…oh, yes, Kill net neutrality?
In 2021, as he was about to leave the agency, Pai declared that a minimum speed requirement of 25 megabits per second (mbps) for U.S. broadband would be enough for Americans.
Now, just three years later, a new President of the United States, and a new FCC Chairman…the FCC has finally redefined the speed classification of “broadband.”
The FCC has decided: Those real-life artificial intelligence robocalls are illegal.
According to the FCC in a report statement The broadband speed benchmark released on Thursday has now quadrupled from 25mbps to 100mbps.as edge pointed out that this new benchmark was the standard that current FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel wanted to develop nine years ago. 2015.
“This fix is overdue,” Rosenworcel said in a statement. statement. “It aligns us with pandemic legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the work of our colleagues in other agencies. It also helps us better identify the extent to which low-income and rural communities are underserved.”
This is the main reason why the FCC’s updated broadband definition is so important. The FCC report helps determine how the United States is performing in terms of Internet access. If parts of the country don’t adequately meet these FCC benchmarks, they may receive funding from the government to help better connect the people living in those areas. As the FCC points out, 24 million Americans will not have “fixed terrestrial broadband service” as of 2024. This includes 28% of rural America.
President Joe Biden’s FCC commissioner isn’t stopping at 100mbps either.
“Because doing big things is in our DNA, we’ve also set long-term goals of 1 GB down and 500 MB up,” she continued in the statement. “Our goal is to connect everyone, everywhere, to high-speed broadband. “
Clearly, there’s still a lot of work to be done to achieve good internet access in the U.S. (Two Republican FCC commissioners dissented in a vote to change this broadband benchmark.) But the damage done by the FCC under the previous administration After that, things finally seemed to be moving in the right direction.
