We Shouldn't Base Broadband Subsidies on Speed

[Commentary] It would be a mistake to provide broadband subsidies based on speed requirements rather than technologies. First, speeds delivered to customers are hard to verify. Second, network management practices of broadband providers are trending towards ever higher over-subscription rates, meaning more and more customers sharing smaller pipes onto the Internet despite being promised higher advertised speeds. So if we're going to subsidize based on speed we need to have a clear and strong set of regulatory guidelines that are enforced on an ongoing basis about what advertised speeds actually mean in terms of the actual throughput realized by consumers. But this can get very messy very quickly, and it will undoubtedly require a lot of administrative overhead. Alongside these issues is how do we make sure these top-end speeds are offered at affordable prices? What good is mandating 50/10 networks if that service costs $500 a month to subscribe to? And yet even if broadband providers want to offer these speeds at lower prices they often can't due to the prohibitively high cost of backhaul access. So how are we going to resolve this issue? Another problem with mandating the speeds broadband providers must offer is what if no one wants to buy those speeds in a given market? Why is government making decisions that are better left up to the marketplace to decide? What's arguably more important than Internet speeds is that any last-mile broadband access infrastructure being put in place has the in-network capacity to scale indefinitely to meet demand and that that in-network capacity is open to all applications developers to deliver high bandwidth applications.

But...

IF WE HAVE TO SUBSIDIZE BROADBAND BASED ON SPEED HERE'S HOW TO DO IT
[SOURCE: App-Rising.com, AUTHOR: Geoff Daily]
[Commentary] If we're going to subsidize broadband based on speeds, here are the key things we should be requiring: 1) No less than 100Mbps today scalable to 1Gbps tomorrow. 2) All speeds must be symmetrical. 3) Require some level of guaranteed access and/or reliability.
http://app-rising.com/2009/01/if_we_have_to_subsidize_broadb.html