http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2366808,00.asp?

FCC Now Defines Broadband As 4 Mbps

Up to 24 million Americans lack access to broadband, the Federal Communications Commission announced Tuesday.

Between 14 and 24 million people in the country lack access to high-speed Internet, and immediate prospects for them accessing this service is bleak, the commission said in its sixth annual report to Congress about the state of deployment. The 14 million tally would about equal the 2005 estimated populations of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago combined.

The FCC said the results underscore the need for reform to the Universal Service Fund, innovative approaches to spectrum allocation, the removal of barriers to infrastructure investment, and better broadband data collection.

None of these suggestions are really new, of course. The need for more spectrum has been a hot topic for ages, and efforts on better broadband data collection are already under way.

The report did, however, update its definition of what constitutes broadband service. For over a decade, the standard has been set at 200 Kbps downstream, but the FCC now puts it at 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.

"This is a minimum speed generally required for using today's video-rich broadband applications and services, while retaining sufficient capacity for basic web browsing and e-mail," the FCC said.

The report also outlines states that would qualify as being "unserved" by broadband. The data used to calculate this, however, is based on Census Tract information, as well as ISP subscriber information, so the FCC cautioned that it is not as complete as possible. More detailed broadband data information is in the process of being collected.

Tuesday's study, however, identified 39 states that have areas without broadband access. States not on that list are mostly in the Northeast, including New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, and Rhode Island.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Absolutely fucking great. That should put a stop to so many companies' PR bullshit.

4Mbps might be excssive, but I like raised standards for internet access.

Zoom zoom.

Well the US is kind of behind when it comes to internet, and that is just putting it mildly, so any boost is good. I'd love to see how marketing companies will try to spin their shitty connections now though.

To be fair, the only reason we lag behind is due to our size and population density, and very little else.

When you live miles and miles away from even a small city, your internet sucks. I don't think thats going to be hugely different if you live in Kansas or China.

Then what is the excuse for the Eastern and Western Seaboards? The population density is huge over in NYC area and down towards Miami, yet the internet still blows chunks there.

Page 3:

http://cwafiles.org/speedmatters/state_reports_2009/CWA_Report_on_Internet_Speeds_2009.pdf

That is a by-county ranking. They state that the eastern seaboard has the highest proliferation of fast connection speeds in the US. Although their reasoning is flawed, the data pretty much proves that population concentration in the US correlates heavily with good internet speeds.

That is not what I was aking though. I know that the eastern seaboard has the best internet, but why is what speed they have still pathetic compared to other nation's innternet speed?

Compared to whom?

If Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Massachusettes and Delaware were independent countries, they would all be in the top 15 countries in the world. So who are you trying to compare to? Korea and Japan, which are well above European internet averages, or what?

I'm not arguing that many parts of the US are behind. But I do believe it has to do with the size of the country, and the massive capital costs to build the infrastructure, as opposed to something else. Parts of the US have acess to insane speeds. I tested on a connection just 2 days ago that was getting speeds of 60mb/d and 45mb/u.

FYI, take a look at speedtest.net's most recent results:
http://www.speedtest.net/global.php#0,1

North America is ranked #2 in terms of region..The US is even ahead of Canada.

If you average out those states states you get a little over 14 Mbits, 14.09 to be precise. Now let's remove Korea and Japan, and youa r eleft with some pretty amazing countries up there. Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Moldova, etc. Kind of pathetic that even the densest regions of the most advanced country can't keep up with countries like those.

As for your NA comparison, I mean seriously? I didn't even know there were more than 3 countries in NA in existance. That's like saying "yeah I came in the race first, out of 3 contestants."