Redefining broadband

The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has redefined its definition of broadband. [1] The FCC had used 200 kilo bits per second (kbps) as the threshold and has now increased this by a factor of 20 to 4 Mega bits per second (Mbps). India has proposed that 3-4 Mbps be used as the broadband threshold in a consultation paper arguing "that many bandwidth hungry applications are not getting developed as they see no business model due to restrictive capacity of the Internet in India". [2]

This trend towards higher thresholds for the definition of broadband suggests that the speed used by international organizations—256 kbps—is becoming out of touch with national goalposts and should be reexamined. [3] Nevertheless, most countries do not provide an explicit speed for broadband in their statistics and instead use general criteria such as "always-on" Internet connections or service categories (ADSL, cable modem).

This post will be updated to add the broadband definitions used by different countries as they become available.

See earlier post about this subject.

[1] "In determining whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion, this Sixth Report takes the overdue step of raising the minimum speed threshold for broadband from services in “excess of 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in both directions”—a standard adopted over a decade ago in the 1999 First Broadband Deployment Report ... As an alternative benchmark for this year’s report, and given that this year’s inquiry was conducted in conjunction with the National Broadband Plan proceeding, we find it appropriate and reasonable to adopt instead the minimum speed threshold of the national broadband availability target proposed in the National Broadband Plan. The National Broadband Plan recommends as a national broadband availability target that every household in America have access to affordable broadband service offering actual download (i.e., to the customer) speeds of at least 4 Mbps and actual upload (i.e., from the customer) speeds of at least 1 Mbps. This target was derived from analysis of user behavior, demands this usage places on the network, and recent experience in network evolution." See: FCC. July 20, 2010. SIXTH BROADBAND DEPLOYMENT REPORT. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-129A1.doc

[2] "Extrapolating this trend and considering that a household connection is generally used by 3 to 4 persons, the bandwidth requirement per connection is expected to be minimum of 3 to 4 Mbps per household in very near future to support emerging applications." See: TRAI. June 10, 2010. Consultation Paper on National Broadband Plan.

http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/trai/upload/ConsultationPapers/202/consultationon10june10.pdf

[3] The ITU and OECD define broadband as 256 kbps. See: ITU. March 2010. Definitions of World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/handbook.html and "OECD Broadband Portal" at: http://www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband

Defining broadband

There is no official international definition of broadband. There are a number of references citing ITU-T Recommendation I.113 as broadband being faster than primary rate ISDN (i.e., at least 1.544 or 2 Megabits per second (Mbps) depending on whether the North American or European primary rate ISDN is used). There are also references to OECD statistical reports which define broadband as at least 256 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction. [1]

In reference to definitions of broadband, few countries actually define a speed. The US describes “high-speed” as more than 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction and “advanced” as speeds of at least 200 kbps in both directions for FCC statistical reporting purposes. [2] Another example would be the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority which defines broadband speeds to be "upstream or downstream data flow of a minimum of 256 Kbps.” [3] The Infocom Development Authority of Singapore does not explicitly define broadband but makes reference to “entry-level 512 kbps”. [4] The Office of the Telecommunications Authority in Hong Kong states: “At present, there is no internationally agreed definition of broadband. In general, "broadband" refers to internet access service with transmission speed from hundreds of kbps (kilobits per second) to several Mbps (Megabits per second) (1 Mb = 1000 kb).”[5]

One can build on the concept of defining broadband as to what is actually available in the market and what speeds consumers are using. In the Netherlands, only 5% of subscribers to the incumbent KPN DSL service use speeds of between 375-750 kbps down and 128 kbps up; 95% use speeds of at least 1.5 Mbps down and 256 kbps up (end 2005).[6] In Denmark, only one quarter of subscribers use DSL with down speeds of less than 512 kbps; 75% thus use speeds of at least 512 kbps downstream (end 2005).[7]

In conclusion, while 256 kbps might be taken as the minimum acceptable speed to be considered broadband, in reality, service offerings⎯at least in advanced broadband markets⎯have moved beyond that and in some cases, speeds that low are not even available for broadband services. Thus it seems realistic to use primary rate ISDN (1.5 - 2 Mbps) as the minimum speed to be considered true broadband.

[1] Singh, Rajnesh. "How BROAD is my BAND???!!" Singh-a-Blog. April 30, 2006. http://singh-a-blog.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html.

[2] Federal Communications Commission. 2006. High-Speed Services for Internet Access: Status as of December 31, 2005.

[3] Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority. 2005. The Tanzania Communications (Broadband Services) Regulations.

[4] http://www.ida.gov.sg/Publications/20061213184450.aspx
[5] Office of the Telecommunications Authority. "Definition of Broadband Service?" http://www.ofta.gov.hk/en/tips/servicetype/internet/defbroadband.html.

[6] KPN. 2006. "Quarter 4 2005 Factsheet."
[7] National IT and Telecom Agency. 2006. Tele Yearbook – 2005.