New FCC broadband threshold misses innovation opportunity

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to raise the definition of broadband to 25 mbps down/4 mbps up. The bigger issue is that the FCC missed an opportunity to reach its stated goal of ensuring “advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion” in a faster, smarter, and cheaper way.

Rather than drafting a new regulatory requirement, the FCC could encourage that the services people consume (particularly video, which takes up two-thirds of America’s network capacity) make more efficient use of bandwidth. Improved content encoding and video compression can save 30-50 percent of bandwidth, not to mention drive cost reductions for content and video providers. Engineers in developing countries are innovating video services on networks that deliver less than 1 mbps. Mandating increased speeds and indiscriminately building networks are brute force solutions. The smart, scientific, and cost-effective approach is to format content better to make more efficient use of networks.

[Roslyn Layton studies Internet economics at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark]