Verizon: We're Not Setting Broadband Definition Bar Low - We're just, well, setting the broadband definition bar low
As noted earlier this week, a number of carriers have responded to the FCC's request for a concrete definition of broadband with the suggestion that the FCC stick …
Context & Ripple Effects
Verizon built its wireless broadband reputation on EV-DO — coverage of the network's ups and downs in 2007 documented real-world speeds well short of marketed peak rates — so the company has a long track record of a gap between advertised capability and delivered performance. Now the FCC, mid-inquiry season with open probes into Apple, AT&T and Google Voice alongside its white-spaces opening, has asked carriers what 'broadband' should actually mean.
Verizon's answer, echoed by other carriers, is to urge the agency not to raise the bar — a position confirmed this week and criticized as advocacy for keeping standards low. The stakes are concrete: whatever number the FCC settles on feeds directly into the national broadband plan it is drafting, determining which connections count as adequate and where deployment dollars flow.
First-order effects
- A low official threshold flatters Verizon's existing wireline and EV-DO footprints on paper — fewer of its served areas get classified as underserved, reducing pressure on the company to fund upgrades or justify them against federal benchmarks.
Second-order effects
- Carriers lobbying together for a low bar shift the definitional fight onto the FCC itself: cable operators and wireless providers with slower edge networks gain from a permissive number, while any future raise instantly reclassifies swaths of their networks as inadequate.
Third-order effects
- If the definition gets set low in 2009, it becomes a recurring political battleground — every subsequent revision reopens the same carrier-vs-regulator fight, because the threshold determines both how America measures its own connectivity and which networks qualify for support.
The trend: Broadband speed definitions are becoming a contested regulatory lever, with carriers lobbying to set the benchmark near what they already deliver rather than near what networks could deliver.