FCC dwarfs 200kbps, says Broadband = 4mbps
Stepping ahead with web 2.0, and FCC has announced that 200kbps just won’t be enough any more. With the uplifted demand of internet speed, it is now time to pump up the supply level itself.
In 1999, when most of websites were text-based and had very little or no graphical content, 200kbps made sense for sustainable web browsing. But looking at the present condition, when each and every site contains rich visual content – images, videos, animations (some sites being dedicated for video content sharing/distribution) – as well as complex and heavier server and/or cross site scripting, a 200kbps limit barely handles most websites.
So, this weakness forced the Federal Communication Commission [FCC] to redraw the horizon of data communications, with an amendment for the new standard of broadband. FCC decided that a internet data connection with at least 4mbps downstream and 1mbps upstream will be eligible to be called broadband.
Five long years after the declaration of 200kbps as the broadband lower speed limit by the FCC, India passed the bill which had ordered data providers to stream at least 256kbps to advertise a ‘broadband‘ connection. A long time has passed, and though some operators have already started to move the mountain, it’s a question of how soon the Indian government adopts and implements a comparable/equivalent standard, and how soon it will reach the masses, for most of whom 256kbps is still a dream.