Regulatory Definitions of Broadband

Luke’s earlier post on Tiscali raises a good point. What is broadband? And, always important for critical Ofcom policy-watchers like our loyal readers (both of you) — who decides?

A marketplace decision is clearly preferable in my opinion. For example, we all know that a Smart car isn’t — isn’t a car that is. It’s not a car in the sense of the word that we would ever attempt to pick up a romantic date in it. No regulator like Ofcom needs to tell us otherwise, right?

By contrast, a regulator can mandate what speeds constitute broadband, and regulate the advertising of claims with respect to broadband, etc. But (I’m using my best hippie voice here) by defining something, you negate things that don’t meet that definition. Didn’t Cadburys have similar problems in the EU with the definition of ‘chocolate’? All of a sudden Cadburys was decreed not to be ‘chocolate’. I’m inclined to let the consumer decide what is chocolate, and what is broadband. So, as students of the regulatory process, what we really end up studying is not speed, but consumers’ capabilities to fend for themselves in the marketplace. We also confront regulatory ’solutions’ to marketplace frailties that are often just as bad. Are high-tech products and services so different from chocolate? Maybe they are, but I doubt regulators like Oftel have studied the underlying issue with any degree of depth.

By the way, a very intelligent former client of mine always used to bang-on about broadband nomenclature. He rightly pointed out that any wide area network speed that is slower than a LAN is not, technically speaking, ‘broadband’. Under that definition, very few consumer offerings are true broadband. So, for example, if I have a 54 mbps WIFI ethernet LAN in my office or home office and I connect to the internet over a 1.5 mbps connection, that’s not exactly broadband, is it?

The FCC defines broadband as 200 kbps for reporting purposes but in no case regulates the advertising of broadband services. Under U.S. law, adverts cannot generally be misleading, but there are no sector-specific regulations that apply to broadband adverts — that I am aware of.

Full disclosure: I’m an attorney for a broadband provider, but this post (like all of my Ofcom Watch posts) reflects my personal views.