Regulators have been urged not to mandate a criterion for winning the $7.2 billion in funding for broadband as super-fast broadband speeds by Telecom companies vying for the money included in the economic stimulus package from President Obama.
A lack of government standards, however, has led to a lagging in the average broadband speeds, which are viewed as an important driver for economic development, by the US over its industrialized peers, according to critics of this approach.
The unwritten rules that will manage how the billions are to be handed out by regulators are still to be shaped by the lobbying of Internet firms, Telecommunications companies and others.
Speaking for Comptel, an industry group that provides representation for rivals that are smaller than companies like AT&T Inc, spokesman Dave Malfara said “Speed is a movable target. One of the fears that we have is that a definition would be too high” and the cost of providing such fast service would eat into profits, he said at a public meeting on the funding.
The view was one that was agreed with by The Wireless Communications Association, which represents wireless broadband companies including Clearwire Corp and AT&T.
Internet speeds should be indicative of market requirements say companies, but according to the data provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development many public interest group say that this is one of the reasons why the US is trailing behind countries like Korea, Japan and France when it come to broadband speeds.
The vice president of strategy for the Leadership Conference of Civil Rights, Mark Lloyd said “The government’s role is to set some targets and some policy goals and to push the market. We’ve relied on market forces for the last 15 years. … We have a market failure here.”
The majority of experts agree that the definition of broadband speed at around 768Kbps given by the US Federal Communications Commission is by most standards slow.