Speed Limit

For the U.S. broadband definition, the FCC has plans to raise the minimum speed for download (DL) and upload (UL) to 25 mbps and 3 mbps, respectively.  According to the most recent NTIA report that summarizes broadband availability to urban and rural residents in each state and nationwide, only 51.2% of rural residents currently have access to DL speeds greater than 25 mbps, compared to 93.8% of urban residents.  Some other download speed comparisons include:

	> 10	> 25	> 50
rural	93.8%	51.2%	46.9%
urban	99.9%	93.8%	91.3%

Twenty-one states fall below the 51.2% of the nationwide rural population with DL speeds greater than 25 mbps.  Four of those states (Alaska, Montana, Texas, and Vermont) provide less than 20% of their rural population with this DL speed.  If the FCC definition changes, some ISPs have a lot of work ahead of them if they care about their reputations.