Is the Federal Government's Defined Speed for Broadband Too Slow?

The federal government set 768 kilobits per second (Kbps) for downloading and 200 Kbps for uploading as minimum acceptable speeds to qualify for broadband stimulus grants. But critics say those speeds hardly equate to true broadband.

"It's almost impossible to participate in a real-time video conference [at that speed]. It's almost impossible to share video files, music files, pictures -- any large quantity of data with a time-sensitive nature to it. It's almost impossible to do that because it's barely four times the speed of dial-up," said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, a consumer group advocating for higher speeds within the National Broadband Plan, which the FCC plans to release March. "Certainly on the downstream side, you might be able to stream YouTube videos, but you're going to have a lot of stuttering and buffering," Turner added. "On the upstream side, it's barely enough to engage in a two-way voice over Internet phone call." Some critics say the federal government's standard, as written, would cement America's low ranking among national average broadband speeds. Turner contends that this would stunt the nation's economy, which increasingly depends on fast Internet connections.

The U.S. ranked 19th in average advertised broadband speeds compared to other countries in a 2008 study conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group headquartered in France that helps governments tackle economic, social and governance challenges of a global economy. If the national plan holds to the minimum speeds required by the stimulus, old-style copper lines will likely be used to provide DSL connections in regions that are now classified as unserved, said Alan Shark, executive director of the Public Technology Institute. He wants subsidies to fund more advanced technology. "We're preserving the current infrastructure," Shark said. "What new is going to be built, other than taking copper lines and putting in a few little switches?"