Benton Institute for Broadband & Society Appreciates FCC's Move to Raise the Bar for Broadband

The Federal Communications Commission last updated its speed benchmarks for advanced telecommunications capability in January 2015; since then our online lives have changed dramatically, so the Commission’s coming action is welcome and overdue. The new benchmark aligns the FCC standard with the bar set by Congress in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. On the deployment question, recognizing the country’s enduring digital divide, Congress allocated billions of dollars in the last five years to ensure broadband networks reach everyone, everywhere in the country, that service is affordable, and can be used for healthcare, education and other essential services. As Congress and the FCC have now wisely recognized, it is not enough for networks to meet just certain deployment milestones. Consumer behavior is part of the picture: we cannot reach our universal broadband goals without widespread adoption and we cannot achieve universal broadband adoption if service is not affordable. The federal government, the states, and many local governments are using historic investments to close the digital divide. But we haven’t completed the task yet and it is no time to claim a victory that has yet to be achieved.