There is still no certainty about how the financing will be made, the legal framework or the support of companies, but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plan to bring broadband Internet to all American homes is presented today. And it promises connections at a speed of at least 100 Mbps for all Americans, by 2020.
The proposal involves connecting more than 100 million households that have no Internet access to the network to date, and equipping them with access at least 20 times faster than most Internet connections available to American homes.
In addition to download at least 100 Mbps and Upload of at least 50 Mbps, it is known that the plan foresees that the television networks give up some of the transmission frequencies to widen the spectrum available for the wireless Internet, a measure that some of those involved will have already shown to be available to accept.
Another of the proposals included in the National Broadband Plan involves making connections of at least 1 Gbps available in all locations to schools, libraries, hospitals or government buildings – which can serve as an access point. In addition, all users must have at their disposal means to find out what energy consumption is associated with the use of Internet services.
Measures are also planned to ensure effective competition between the various providers of Internet services, applications and content.
Measures were also announced to encourage citizens to subscribe to broadband services, which a third of families do not currently have, as they consider it too expensive or unnecessary. The FCC’s goal is for the domestic usage rate to rise to 90 percent. One of the solutions is the creation of a fund (Connect America Fund) of 15.5 billion dollars (about 11 billion euros) – with money from the Universal Service Fund – that provides Internet (and voice) services at speeds in download 4Mbps.
Another of the problems detected by the FCC in the studies that preceded the project was the frequent lag between the contracted speeds and those that consumers benefited from, a website and an application for iPhone and Android that made it possible to measure speed last Thursday. connection.
Users can then share the information with their home zone to help build a broadband «dead zone» map.
Editor’s Note: The news was corrected in a reference where the download and upload speed had been changed.
