Broadband in America: Where It Is and Where It Is Going

In order to inform the Federal Communications Commission's development of a National Broadband Plan, on August 6, 2009, the FCC announced that the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, based at the Columbia Business School in New York would conduct an independent, outside expert review of projected deployment of new and upgraded networks. The FCC asked CITI to provide an analysis of the public statements of companies as to their future plans to deploy and upgrade broadband networks, as well as evaluate the relationship between previous such announcements and actual deployment. A draft of the study has now been completed and the FCC is asking for public input.

The report concludes that:

1) By 2013-14, broadband service providers expect to be able to serve about 95% of U.S. homes with at least a low speed of wired broadband service and they expect to offer to about 90% of homes advertised speeds of 50 mbps downstream.3 Service providers expect to provide many homes with access to these higher speeds by 2011-2012.4 Wireless broadband service providers expect to offer wireless access at advertised speeds ranging up to 12 mbps downstream (but more likely 5 mbps or less due to capacity sharing) to about 94% of the population by 2013. In addition to several wireless broadband choices, the majority of American homes will have the choice of two wired broadband services. Upstream speeds for wired and wireless services will generally be significantly lower than downstream.

2) A significant number of U.S. homes, perhaps five to ten million (which represent 4.5 to 9 percent of households)5, will have significantly inferior choices in broadband: most of these homes will have wireless or wired service broadband available only at speeds substantially lower than the speeds available to the rest of the country.

3) Adoption of broadband service will continue to lag substantially behind the availability of broadband for the foreseeable future. Investment analysts forecast that about 69% of households will subscribe to wired broadband by 2015, and that 53% of the population will subscribe to wireless broadband services by 2013.