Sorry, AT&T and Verizon: 4Mbps isn’t fast enough for “broadband”

Contrary to what AT&T and Verizon would have you believe, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said 4Mbps is too slow to be considered broadband and that Internet service providers who accept government subsidies should offer at least 10Mbps.

At a hearing in front of the House Committee on Small Business, Rep Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) pointed to communities with little or no access to high-speed broadband, saying if the minimum speed isn’t high enough, “rural constituents in my district will be left on the wrong side of the digital divide.” Chairman Wheeler responded: “We have proposed increasing the throughput in order to get Universal Service funds from 4Mbps to 10Mbps for precisely the reason that you mentioned, that you can’t have a digital divide. When 60 percent of the Internet’s traffic at prime time is video, and it takes 4 or 5Mbps to deliver video, a 4Mbps connection isn’t exactly what’s necessary in the 21st century. And when you have half a dozen different devices, wireless and other connected devices in a home that are all going against that bandwidth, it’s not enough. What we are saying is we can’t make the mistake of spending the people’s money, which is what Universal Service is, to continue to subsidize something that’s subpar.”