A 25:1 ratio is what John Rose, president of OPASTCO, points out is the difference between what the National Broadband Plan calls for between urban and rural areas. The objective for 2020 is to have at least 100 million homes at 100 Mb/s. Rose points out that the other 15 to 30 million rural homes would have a different broadband standard of 4 Mb/s. Rose is concerned that this definition of broadband could relegate rural areas to the equivalent of a 60 Kb/s circuit in today’s terms.
The FCC did point out, in panels at the OPASTCO 2010 Summer Convention, that the four Mb/s goal is today’s number, it represents throughput and not peak and that this goal will change over time. The question is why didn’t the FCC explicitly state the objective for rural broadband for the year 2020 in the Natonal Broadband Report?
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