You’ve Been Served: Defining Broadband as 100/100 is not 100

The pandemic has caused the U.S. to take seriously the question of how to make sure all residents have broadband access for remote learning, telehealth, government services, work, job training, and other activities necessary to participate fully in society. Unfortunately, the calls to define broadband as a connection offering symmetric, 100 Mbps download and 100 Mbps upload bandwidth (100/100) are arbitrary, with no evidence supporting these numbers. Every application commonly used for key services, as well as popular entertainment streaming services, rely on far less than 100 Mbps. The right way to define broadband is to grade it along a continuum of factors that affect the quality users experience, similar to how the Federal Communications Commission actually already does it in its reverse auctions. If broadband is defined by having a connection of at least 100/100, then only about 42% of households has access to broadband.