COMMISSION SEEKS SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR BROADBAND DEFINITION

摘要

The FCC sought "tailored comment" on how to interpret the term "broadband." The answer "is essential to evaluating the extent to which 'broadband capability' is available, and informs the evaluation of particular policy approaches intended to ensure access to broadband capability," the commission said in a public notice. "We now seek more targeted comment on three aspects of this issue: (1) the general form, characteristics, and performance indicators that should be included in a definition of broadband; (2) the thresholds that should be assigned to these performance indicators today; and (3) how the definition should be reevaluated over time." Most of the contributions that the FCC has received have dealt only with throughput speeds, Carlos Kirjner, senior broadband adviser to Chairman Julius Genachowski, said in a post on the Broadband.gov blog. "Engineers know that these numbers by themselves are most often misleading. For example, in most cases the 'advertised' throughput speed has a tenuous relation with the actually delivered speed, which will actually vary over time, depending on the application, the server, and many other factors. In addition, for many important applications, such as voice and videoconferencing, other performance metrics, such as latency, are crucial." Comments are due Aug. 31, replies Sept. 8.