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"Broadband" is one of those words that is poorly understood, because
its meaning has been intentionally distorted, twisted, and warped to
serve the needs of companies selling broadband and sometimes even
governments. In reality, broadband has no permanent definition. It is
only a marker for the present, not for the past…not for the future.
What was broadband yesterday seems like dial-up today…the fastest
broadband of today will be the dial-up of tomorrow…the broadband of
tomorrow will become the dial-up of the day after…
 There
is no end to the bandwidth demand. It should surprise no one that the
broadband standard of today should be defined as 20 Mbps or more and as
1-to-3 gigabits (1,024 Mbps to 3,072 Mbps) in the next five years.
A Few Words To First Understand
- Bandwidth
refers to the highest capacity of data transfer or throughput for a
given connection, such as 56 Kbps being the upper bandwidth capacity of
a dial-up modem.
- It takes 1,024 Kbps (kilobits per second) to equal 1 Mbps (megabits per second).
- DSL generally ranges from 256Kbps to 1.5 Mbps, and cable modems from 1 Mbps to 3 Mbps.
The Origins Of Broadband
- Originally, broadband was loosely defined as bandwidth two or more times greater than dial-up speeds.
- Everything
from 256 Kbps to 3 Mbps is categorized as “broadband”, not because
there is a standard, but because the term usually defines the bandwidth
that an infrastructure can deliver
- Broadband is most
frequently marketed as “up to X Mbps” for rarely do consumers have
access to the full bandwidth listed, unless everyone in their
neighborhood is asleep and not downloading a massive file.
- The
term "broadband" should be defined as: A rate of internet access
that end users determine is acceptable and cost-effective when compared
to current uses and infrastructure. Internet access becomes
"broadband" when it is a significant improvement over the previous
access method and, once implemented, is no longer the determining
factor regarding how the internet is used.
How Industry Made “Broadband” A Misnomer
As
consumers began to demand more from the internet, the
telecommunications industry sought to satisfy those needs with
“broadband.” A company’s ability to offer broadband is dependent on
them purchasing expensive equipment to deliver DSL, the proximity of
that equipment to fiber optic cable (which has the massive bandwidth to
feed the DSL), the distance from the DSL equipment to the consumer or
business, the quality of the copper wire access line, and other
factors.
Cable companies entered the broadband market,
using their coax cable which provides the cable content. For the last
several years, the telcos (telephone companies) and cablecos (cable
companies) have been engaged in intense competition marketing their
versions of broadband.
If you were a telco and all you can
deliver over your DSL line was 256 Kbps, the last thing you wanted was
to say that you had only “256K broadband,” when the cableco competitor
was selling 1 Mbps of bandwidth. The telco would say “we have
broadband,” and rely on the consumer’s ignorance to believe that 256
Kbps broadband was the same as the cable company’s 1 Mbps broadband. In
a few cases, the telco may have had more bandwidth, but not many.
How Governments Made “Broadband” A Misnomer
States
and the federal government added to the misnomering of broadband as it
serves their self-interest. Currently, the United States ranks 11th
among nations, relative to broadband per residences. South Korea, Hong
Kong, Canada, Taiwan, and Iceland are all ahead of the U.S. in
deployments and also in bandwidth capacity of that broadband. This is
best illustrated by the September 9, 2004 statements of Commissioners
at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Commissioner Michael
Cobb stated:
“Still, one
glaring fact stands out: the United States is ranked eleventh in the
world in broadband penetration! This Report somehow finds that this is
acceptable, and that our efforts are resulting in timely deployment. I
think our efforts are insufficient and that broadband deployment is
insufficient, so I dissent to this Report.” “When consumers
in other countries get so much more bang for their broadband buck than
we do, something has to change. Nothing puts our challenge into more
vivid relief than Chart 18 in this Report. In Japan, for as little as
$10, consumers get broadband service at 8,000 kbps. In Korea, consumers
get 10,000 kbps for the same price that we pay for 1,500 kbps.”
“Consumers elsewhere get great prices for revolutionary speeds. Why,
then, is the FCC still collecting data about 200 kbps service and
calling it broadband? Our dated definition of broadband speed should
have been dropped by the wayside long ago. We also claim that broadband
is available to everyone in a zip code if it is offered to only one
person in that zip code. This half-hearted effort at analyzing
availability should be scrapped. Correcting these approaches for the
next Report is neither reasonable nor timely.” See the full statement from Commissioner Copps See the full statement from Chairman Powell
Broadband Is...
In its purest form, the word “broadband” is simply a marker of some
level of acceptable minimum bandwidth capacity in a given period of
time. The more that we demand or want from the internet, the more
bandwidth we will need and broadband is redefined to a higher level of
bandwidth.
The problem with most telecommunications
infrastructures is that they are based upon copper wire to deliver
bandwidth to the home or sometimes called the “last mile.” From a
purely physics standpoint, copper wire cannot deliver the bandwidth we
need now or in the future.
That is why every community and
states needs a new infrastructure. For more, see the section on this
website entitled “Why UltraBroadband™ is Broadband.”
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Broadband