I literally grimaced when I first read about the 25/3 Mbps speed test that will likely be part of the new $20.4 billion grant program recently announced by the FCC. My first thought was that the 25/3 Mbps goal would provide an excuse for the FCC to give the grant money to the big telcos again. Those companies could then take another ten years to bring rural DSL up to the speeds they should have achieved on their own a decade ago. With the history of the FCC pandering to the big telcos I instantly feared this possibility.

But let’s assume that the upcoming grants will be available to all comers. Why would the FCC choose the 25/3 Mbps speed target? It’s a terrible goal for many reasons.

• While this FCC will not admit it, 25/3 Mbps is already obsolete as the definition of adequate broadband. It’s been five years since 25/3 Mbps was adopted and households are using a lot more data than five years ago. It’s pretty easy to make the case that the definition of broadband today probably ought to be at least 50 Mbps download.
• If the 25/3 Mbps speed is already outdated today, then it’s a lousy goal for a decade from now. This FCC should not repeat the same blunder as the last FCC did with the original CAF II program. They should set a forward-looking speed goal that reflects the likely speed requirements at the time the grant networks will be constructed. Any network engineer who tracks customer usage will tell you that the minimum speed requirement for eight years from now should be at least 100 Mbps.
• The 25/3 Mbps just feels ‘puny’. I got the same letdown when I read that a new NASA goal is to put a man on the moon again. Considering the huge leaps we’ve made in technology since 1969, striving for a moon-landing again feels like a small national goal and a waste of our national resources – and so does setting a broadband speed goal of 25/3 Mbps.

One of the goals that Congress gave the FCC is to strive to bring rural broadband into parity with urban broadband. In setting a goal of 25/3 the FCC is ignoring the broadband trend in cities. The big cable companies have increased minimum download speeds for new customers to beteen 100 and 200 Mbps and have unilaterally increased speeds for existing customers. 25/3 Mbps is a DSL speed, and we see the biggest telcos finally starting to walk away from copper. Verizon has gotten out of the copper business in nearly 200 exchanges in the northeast. AT&T has been losing DSL customers and replacing them with fiber customers. It’s almost unthinkable that the FCC would establish a new forward-looking grant program and not expect broadband speeds any faster than DSL.

In my mind, the FCC betrayed rural communities when they adopted the 10/1 Mbps speed goal for CAF II. That told rural communities that they had to settle for second-rate broadband that was far slower than the rest of the country. From what I hear, most rural communities don’t even consider the CAF II upgrades as real broadband. Rural communities want fiber. They view anything slower than fiber as nothing more than a stepping-stone towards eventually getting fiber.

The FCC needs to listen to what rural America wants. If this giant new grant program will make rural communities wait for years to get 25/3 Mbps then rural America will largely ignore it. Communities will continue to plan for something better. Households might begrudgingly buy 25/3 broadband, but the people in rural America know that is not the same as broadband elsewhere and they will continue to clamor for the same broadband that they see in cities.

I hope the FCC understands this. Even if they allow technologies in these grants that can only deliver 25/3 Mbps, the FCC can still use the grant ranking process to favor faster broadband. If the grants grading process emphasizes speed, then the $20 billion could probably be used to bring fiber to 4 or 5 million rural homes. In my mind that would be the ideal use of these grants, because those homes would be brought to parity with the rest of the country. Those homes could be taken off of the FCC’s worry list and the universe of underserved homes would be significantly reduced. If the grants give money to anything less than fiber, the FCC will have to keep on dumping grant money into the same communities over and over until they finally finance fiber.

This blog is part of a series on Designing the Ideal Federal Broadband Grant Program.