Lowering the bar

AGE OF THE GEEK COLUMN: Congratulations, rural Iowa, if your access to broadband internet wasn't good enough last year, it might be good enough this year.
Not that anything has changed in regards to said access.
Last year, the FCC's annual review concluded that roughly ten percent (as of 2014) of the country, mostly rural areas, still lack access to fixed broadband at the benchmark speed of 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload. This is the bandwidth speed that is currently the minimum for "high speed internet," which all but knocks outdated services like DSL out of the distinction.
For those not technically inclined, basic internet use today, your e-mail and normal web browsing, is achievable at about 4Mbps down, which was the previous benchmark. Video is possible, at standard definition, so long as that's the only thing you're doing. Forget about having two people watch Netflix at the same time and more bandwidth heavy functions like video conferencing or live streaming are right out.
This is fine if you are a retired senior that uses the internet only to keep up with friends and family on Facebook. For a household with multiple people, particularly tech savvy children, 4Mbps is like a house with four bathrooms but only enough water pressure to use one sink or shower at a time.
For a small business, particularly a business with employees or one that uses the internet for anything more than intercompany e-mail, 4Mbps is all but unworkable.
The current standard of 25Mbps/3Mbps is sufficient for most households today, but probably not tomorrow. The amount of data running across the internet isn't getting smaller. Webpages are continually growing in size, with more elaborate code and larger images, all of which need higher speeds. News sites today often incorporate auto-play video, which assumes you have a connection capable of supporting the increasingly large bandwidth requirements. Ten years ago 720p video was top of the line quality. Today it's practically the minimum standard, with 1080p being your average resolution and the industry inching towards 4K.
In the last week I've had to download gigabytes worth of programs, patches, drivers, and updates to restore my computer. That would not be possible if my access to the internet was limited to using my phone as a hotspot. Not only is a huge swath of rural America lacking access to broadband internet sufficient for today's needs, tomorrow's needs are increasing faster than they can keep up.
The FCC is required by law to take action if they determine that telecommunications capability isn't being deployed to all Americans in a timely fashion. This means more infrastructure investment to lower the barrier of entry and setting policies that promote competition among internet providers.
ISPs aren't a huge fan of competition. Most of the country is divided among an oligopoly of providers that stay out of each other's way. The entry cost of getting into the market makes upstart competition functionally impossible and attempts of municipalities to provide public internet have been countered by armies of lawyers and ISP funded legislators creating regulations that restrict municipal broadband.
New FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is also apparently not a fan of telecom giants competing. Now that Chairman Pai has given the greenlight to let them sell your personal information and throttle your connection speeds at will, the next item on his to-do list seems to be figuring out how to keep the FCC from having to do anything that might improve America's third-rate internet infrastructure.
His solution: If internet speeds across the nation aren't meeting the standards, lower the standards.
Last week Pai introduced a notice of inquiry that suggests Americans don't actually need access to fixed broadband because cellphones are good enough. Setting a mobile standard at 10Mbps down and 1Mbps up, the idea is that they can say broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a timely fashion, thus, mission accomplished. Nothing more to do. This is, of course, complete nonsense.
The idea that mobile internet is sufficient for a household in 2017 is beyond idiotic. Mobile internet is slow and vastly more expensive. Those that depend on it either pay through the nose for unlimited data plans or have to be ever vigilant of their data cap lest they get hit with huge overage fees. Using the water analogy again, this is like saying a household doesn't need running water, they can just buy bottled water at the store.
And that's without considering businesses. Consider every small town business in rural Iowa, struggling to keep up with insufficient DSL connections. As more and more people utilize the internet to work from home, sufficient speeds and reliable service aren't just a luxury, they're a basic necessity. Imagine trying to attract a business to your community and telling them that they'll have to make do with cell phones because your community doesn't have a sufficient internet infrastructure.
Small town Iowa already faces enough challenges when it comes to attracting people and businesses. Now it looks like the FCC intends to abandon those communities, washing their hands of their obligation to keep America connected.
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and doesn't think that problems are solved by lowering standards and pretending they don't exist.