The Future Is in Symmetrical, High-Speed Internet Speeds

Congress is about to make critical decisions about the future of internet access and speed in the United States. It has a potentially once-in-a-lifetime amount of funding to spend on broadband infrastructure, and at the heart of this debate is the minimum speed requirement for taxpayer-funded internet. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the granularity of this debate, but ultimately it boils down to this: cable companies want a definition that requires them to do and give less, one that will not meet our needs in the future. If Congress goes ahead with their definition of 100 Mbps of download and 20 of upload (100/20 Mbps) instead of what we need—100 Mbps of download and 100 Mbps of upload (100/100 Mbps)—we will be left behind. Building a 100/20 Mbps infrastructure can be done with existing cable infrastructure, the kind already operated by companies such as Comcast and Charter, as well as with wireless. But raising the upload requirement to 100 Mbps—and requiring 100/100 Mbps symmetrical services—can only be done with the deployment of fiber infrastructure. That number, while requiring fiber, doesn’t represent the fiber’s full capacity, which makes it better suited to a future of internet demand.

[Ernesto Falcon is Senior Legislative Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Katharine is the Associate Director of Policy and Activism at EFF.]