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Don’t Be Fooled by FCC’s Proposal for 10/1 Mobile Broadband Speed Metrics. It’s 2017, Not 1997.

September, 21, 2017


By Jeff Hannah

Network communications, and more specifically Internet broadband connectivity, has changed how Americans

work, interact with one another, consume information, and find leisure from entertainment. Each of these broadband-

powered applications provide a certain degree of freedom. Freedom to work from home, freedom to connect on a whim

with friends and family in a distant city, freedom to digest information from a multitude of news outlets, and freedom to

watch a television show on demand. Even before companies such as Netflix, GoToMeeting, Skype, and YouTube were

founded, the creators of the 1996 Telecommunications Act recognized the Internet as a platform from which “diverse

political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and a myriad avenues for intellectual activity” may

occur.1

However, these freedoms have been denied to many Americans due to the Digital Divide, or “the economic,

educational, and social inequalities between those who have computers and online access and those who do not”.2 The

notion of economic, educational, and social division created by a lack of access to computers and Internet connectivity

was a concern to regulators even before the 1996 Telecommunications Act.3 For this reason, the authors of the 1996

Telecommunications Act incorporated language under Section 706, Advanced Telecommunications Incentives to

“encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all

Americans.”4 To measure Americans access to advanced communications capabilities, Section 706 also stipulates that

the FCC must regularly “initiate a notice of inquiry [NOI] concerning the availability of advanced telecommunications

1
1996 Telecommunications Act
2
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/digital%20divide
3
1996 Telecommunications Act
4
Id.
capability to all Americans… [to] determine whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all

Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion”.5

Section 706 has been and continues inspire contentious interpretations of the FCC’s authority. The Section’s

definition of “advanced telecommunications capabilities” as “any transmission media or technology, as high-speed,

switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data,

graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology” evokes the FCC’s ability to define the market standard

for Americans access to advanced communications capabilities regardless of technology.6 From the very first NOI and

subsequent report issued by the FCC in 1998 the FCC has been tasked with accessing what is the market standard for

advanced communications capabilities, inviting then in 1998 for “commenters to describe the advanced services that

they want to provide” and to provide definitions for “broadband” and “high-speed”.7 Given the elastic definition of

advanced communications capabilities and that Section 706 “concerns ‘all Americans’ and contains no reference to their

fixed locations or mobile uses of telecommunications”, the FCC has been entrusted with defining what advanced

communications capabilities entail and if they are made available to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.8

Given the amorphous definition of advanced communications capabilities, Section 706 suggests that Congress

entrusted the FCC to determine “new technologies [as advanced communications capabilities] as they are developed

and [exclude] ones that were once cutting-edge but have since become conventional.9 Thus, the FCC has the ability to

define what it considers advanced communications capabilities based upon its own interpretations relative to market

standards and data collected via regular NOIs.

5
Id.
6
Id.
7
Inquiry Concerning the Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to All Americans in a Reasonable and Timely
Fashion and Possible Steps to Accelerate Such Deployment Pursuant to Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, CC
Docket 98-146, Federal Communication Commission, 1998
8
Id.
9
Id.
Because broadband connectivity has become essential to (i) the US economy, especially in recent years as services

such as e-mail, video conferencing, and software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms have become enterprise table stakes that

facilitate commerce and communications between colleagues and customers, and (ii) to Americans’ ability to access

news, entertainment, and other forms of information, the FCC in 2015, exercised its ability to define advanced

communications capabilities, specifically defining fixed broadband services as services providing 25 megabits per second

(Mbps) downlink and 3 Mbps uplink. While consumer preference does not suggest that this benchmark is generally

desirable with the advent of higher Mbps services and even 1 Gigabit services, it is efficient enough to support many

broadband applications, such as Netflix, for a single edge customer. For this reason, the FCC’s Thirteenth Section 706

NOI proposes to “maintain the current speed benchmark of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload for fixed

broadband”.10 One may argue that this decision to maintain the speed benchmark does not align with the FCC’s 1998

interpretation of Section 706 to determine “new technologies [as advanced communications capabilities] as they are

developed and [exclude] ones that were once cutting-edge but have since become conventional”, but the FCC’s proposal

to enact a mobile speed benchmark of 10 Mbps downlink and 1 Mbps uplink is certainly not aligned with market

standards.11

The predominate mobile broadband technologies within the US include 3G Evolved High Speed Packet Access

(HSPA+), 3G Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), and 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE), all of which are

mobile broadband technologies formalized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and 3GPP2 in the case of

WCDMA. 3GPP is a group of organizational partners consisting of “seven telecommunications standard development

organizations (ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, TTC)” that provide members of each organization with “a stable

environment to produce the Reports and Specifications that define 3GPP technologies”, such as 3G and 4G.12 The

specifications produced by 3GPP for 3G, 4G, and yet to be fully defined 5G mobile broadband technologies have

10
Thirteenth Section 706 Report Notice of Inquiry, Inquiry Concerning Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to
All Americans in a Reasonable and Timely Fashion, GN Docket No. 17-199, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), August 8,
2017
11
Id.
12
3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), About 3GPPP, http://www.3gpp.org/about-3gpp/about-3gpp
quantifiable key performance metrics with regards to each radio access technologies’ speed benchmarks. However, the

speed benchmarks proposed by the FCC in the Thirteenth Section 706 NOI are regressive, even by 3G speed benchmark

metrics, as third-generation mobile broadband technologies, a specification that was adopted in the year 2000, specifies

mobile broadband downlinks of 14.4 Mbps and uplinks of 5.7 Mbps.13 Newer mobile broadband technologies, such 4G

LTE, provide even higher downlink (100 Mbps) and uplink (50Mbps).14 The FCC’s proposed definition for advanced

communications capabilities as those that are either on par with the market standard for third-generation mobile

broadband in the year 2000 or are one-fifth of the performance metric for current LTE mobile broadband networks.

Therefore, the FCC’s proposed speed benchmarks for mobile broadband are not advanced, they are conventional.

While the FCC finds it appropriate to create “a distinction between these two technologies [fixed and mobile] used

to provide advanced telecommunications capability”, and therefore, implement a separate definition for mobile-based

advanced telecommunications capabilities whereby 10 Mbps downlink and 1 Mbps uplink is an appropriate benchmark

for mobile broadband services, an alternative would be to increase the speed benchmark for fixed broadband so that

fixed broadband networks are capable of supporting increased mobile broadband speed benchmarks. Fixed and mobile

broadband networks are not mutually exclusive, but desirable mobile broadband speeds are not economically

achievable without wireline network support. High-capacity mobile backhaul is essential to meeting the capacity

demands for 4G LTE. Further investment in fixed wireline broadband speed benchmarks would translate into increased

speed benchmarks for mobile broadband applications. Deloitte’s July 2017 Communication Infrastructure Upgrade: The

Need for Deep Fiber white paper reports that “wireline broadband access supports as much as 90 percent of all Internet

traffic even though the majority of traffic ultimately terminates on a wireless device.”15 The report also states that the

“United States needs an $130 - 150 billion of fiber infrastructure investment… over the next 5 – 7 years to adequately

support broadband competition, rural coverage and wireless densification”.16 By stimulating investment in the

13
GSMA, HPSA, https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/gsm-technology/hspa
14
GSMA, LTE, https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/gsm-technology/lte
15
Communications Infrastructure Upgrade: The Need for Deep Fiber, July 2017, Deloitte
16
Id.
deployment of fixed broadband networks, the FCC would also support investment in advanced communications

capabilities, namely fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks.

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