The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) sent formal comments to the FCC last week which revealed that only 51.4 percent of the state’s population has access to mobile download speeds of at least 10 megabits per second (Mbps) and uploads of 1 Mbps. (By comparison, about 99 percent of the state’s population could access 4 Mbps downstream / 1 Mbps upstream today.)
FCC is taking input as it conducts a periodic review of the nation’s wired and wireless broadband. The Commission periodically has increased the definition of what constitutes broadband. As Ars Technica notes, in 2010 the FCC changed its definition of minimum broadband speeds from 200Kbps downstream to today’s standard of 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream.
Four years later, officials say the current 4 Mbps benchmark is outdated and the FCC reportedly is eying 10 Mbps as the new bar, although FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler noted in a recent speech that a 25 Mbps minimum might be warranted. Some companies, such as AT&T and Verizon, reportedly are against raising the definition of broadband from 4 Mbps to 10 Mbps.
According to the FCC, 10 Mbps is enough for one household to be simultaneously watching an HD movie, placing a video call, saving files in the cloud and syncing email.
For the first time, the FCC is considering separate benchmarks for wireline and mobile broadband. It remains to be seen if 10 Mbps downstream would be applied to both.
"Based on our findings, the FCC may want to consider the high degree of variability in speeds and latency when setting mobile thresholds, and hence the threshold for mobile, if measured by mean, may need to be adjusted or viewed very differently than thresholds for wireline services, which are more stable," CPUC wrote in its comments submitted Sept. 4 to the FCC.
California’s findings came from CalSPEED, an open source network performance measurement tool and methodology created for the CPUC with the assistance of a grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
A September 2014 report on CalSPEED prepared by Chico State’s Geographic Information Center (GIC) and its subcontractor Novarum Inc. draws seven conclusions from data gathering between spring 2012 and fall 2013:
- Mobile broadband, at its best, is getting much better VERY quickly.
- Mobile broadband shows wide variation in performance across California.
- Not all carriers are equal – there is a substantial and growing difference in the coverage and quality of mobile broadband service between the best performing and worst performing carrier.
- Mobile broadband service quality is not just local – the user experience is governed not just by local radio access but also by Internet backbone interconnect strategies of the carriers.
- There is a real and growing mobile digital divide between urban and rural and tribal.
- The bulk of the mobile network is not yet VoIP ready.
- Service availability as measured by CalSPEED is less than carriers "advertised service"
Click here to access CalSPEED’s assessment of California mobile broadband.
