It’s just not fair on profit-making companies otherwise
Analysis ISPs should be paid to provide slower internet speeds to poor people.
That’s the extraordinary upshot of a meeting between an ISP industry group and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US.
In a letter [PDF] recording a meeting between the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) and the legal advisors to two FCC commissioners, the industry group “emphasized that the Commission’s goals would be better served by directing support to areas that lack any service at all and those that have access only below 10/1 Mbps.”
The current definition of broadband is 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up. That was introduced in 2015 and replaced an older, outdated definition of 10Mbps down and 1Mbps up.
But in order to meet its own broadband rollout targets, the current FCC has been trying to find ways to lower the 25/3 Mbps requirement. It initially launched an effort to backtrack from the current definition by equating mobile and fixed broadband, and tried to redefine broadband as the average speed used by consumers in specific areas.
That fudge failed, however, after an outcry. And so last month, the FCC proposed a different solution: using its subsidy program for low-income households as a way to get around its current definition by expanding subsidies to ISPs offering only 10/1 Mbps.
www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/11/poor_slower_internet/
Link to PDF mentioned above:
regmedia.co.uk/2018/12/11/wispa-fcc-slow-internet.pdf
h/t CrsCrpr