The Definition of Broadband

June 15, 2009

in Access, The Blog

dictionary 300x300 The Definition of BroadbandWhen faced with NGA policies, one of the biggest sources of “misunderstanding” and inefficient policy making relates to the inappropriate definition of broadband. What is, and what is not considered as broadband is a challenging issue for policy makers drafting NGA national strategies. This is because the level of speed, acknowledged by authorities as broadband, differentiates the government planning and the regulatory expectations from the telecommunications operators.

Broadband, broadband access to be exact, is a very subjective term, primarily due to that it is mainly a marketing term. It refers to the use of a wider range of frequencies that allow higher speeds toward the end-user. The range of frequencies and the effectiveness of use is directly linked to the achievable speeds. It is worth noting that broadband comes as the “evolution” of other terms used before (narrowband, baseband, wideband).

Simply put, the perception of broadband is directly linked to the level of functionality provided by an access connection to the end user. In any given time period, as application and service markets develop more bandwidth is required to do a standard set of functions. That means that the level of speed that characterizes a connection as broadband a) varies by cultures, markets and countries and b) increases over time. This makes the definition of broadband (speed-wise) a moving target, both in the local and in the global context.

Accordingly, any attempt to incorporate a level of speed (e.g. 1Mbps, 10Mbps, 100Mbps) to the definition of broadband is doomed to fail. For successful implementation of broadband policies we need a more relaxed definition that will qualitatively describe what we consider a broadband connection should do for the end-users. The definition has to refer to the functionality that is expected from a “so-called” broadband connection. A speed may be attached to the definition to facilitate short-term action plans, however, this figure will have to be subject to a review/renewal process in predetermined intervals.

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  4. Infrastructure-based Competition in NGA: The Best Way Forward?
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Tagged as: Broadband, Definition, Policy

  • Cyberdoyle, i agree with you. If you can get open access fiber to the user you will soon get high speeds too. What the proponents of "let's get the most out of copper, there's plenty" strategy don't say is that the advertised speeds and operational triple play offerings can be offered at a very small fraction of the population, this that is closer to the CO.

    This is why we very rarely get to see data on triple-play subs served by copper (PSTN) access. It makes this assertion evident.
  • Used to be the definition of broadband was beyond 1.5 Mbps, at least in the US. I suppose that could be translated to above 2 Mbps in Europe. Anyway, what seems to have transpired, owing to the irrelevancy of T1 and E1 to consumer broadband access, is that broadband's definition appears to have dropped almost to the point that it is anything with more bandwidth than dial-up (56kbps). I suppose that is a natural breakpoint as dial-up is not going to be any faster, and what is beyond dial-up, why it must be broadband.
  • Stelios
    Costa, already back in 2003 while preparing the national broadband strategy report, as a committe we agreed to use the following definition (contributed mainly by Scopoulis). A bit long (trying to be all inclusive), but I still like it, since I believe it is ahead of its time:


    Definition of: 1.Broadband and 2.Broadband Access & Services



    Broadband is widely defined as the advanced, feasible, and innovative environment from the political, social, economic, and technological aspects, comprising of:

    • the provision of fast Internet connections to as large as possible part of the population at competitive prices (as a consumer good), without inherent limitations to the transmission systems and the terminal equipment of communicating ends;

    • the appropriate network infrastructure that: a) allows the distributed development of existing and future network applications and information services; b) provides the possibility for uninterrupted connection of users to them; c) meets the needs at each time of applications in bandwidth, interactiveness, and availability; and d) is able to be constantly upgraded at a small incremental cost, in order to meet ever increasing and evolving needs at a pace and cost imposed by progress in IT and Communications technology;

    • providing citizens with the possibility to chose a) among alternative connection offers appropriate for their equipment; b) among various network applications; and c) among various information and entertainment services with the possibility for citizens to participate in the provision of content, applications and services;

    • the appropriate regulatory framework comprising of policies, measures, initiatives, direct and indirect interventions, necessary for strengthening innovation, protecting competition and ensuring a serious balanced economic growth that can be the result of general participation in broadband and the Information Society.



    Broadband networks and services are the networks and services that ensure at each time the uninterrupted and transparent access of citizens to information and telecommunications systems, for meeting their needs. Since this environment is characterized by an ongoing dynamics and undergoes a shaping process, in the above definition no reference is made to specific network features, specific transmission, and most important: it does not determine a specific transmission rate over which a network may be considered as being broadband. Of course, this definition allows for the exclusion of certain technologies, such as the ISDN technology, with limited and not extensible possibilities.

    It should also be noted at this point, that technologies based on data transmission by using certain media such as copper and the air (e.g. ADSL, Wireless LAN), and despite the fact that they nowadays achieve relatively high transmission rates, have some recognized limitations in terms of possible future upgrades due to the nature of the transmission medium. However, they should be taken into consideration, given that they can be used as intermediate points in attaining broadband access. Nowadays there is an international tendency to refer to such technologies as “midband” technologies. Innovation in this term is most probably the result of an attempt to find a point of reference between such technologies and the possibilities of broadband networks.



    Stelios Sartzetakis
  • Blog CMT
    Hi Costas,


    For its data reports, Cocom considers



    "Broadband capacity: Downstream capacity equal to or higher than 144 Kbit/s"



    http://tinyurl.com/5snqjz



    In Spain, according to the Ministry of Industry, also 99% of population has broadband coverage.



    Blog CMT
  • Cyberdoyle
    Very wise blogpost, spot on!
    In our country (UK) the perception seems to be that we have broadband. This is fostered by the incumbent (BT) stating that 99.6% of the country has access to adsl. On further investigation it transpires that actually the figure is more like 70%. Too late, the digital britain report is already written, and 30% of the land will now have to rely on mobile or satellite. Oh well. In my humble opinion broadband is best delivered through fibre to the home. That way speed doesn't become an issue, as the consumer can have as much or as little as they want or are prepared to pay for. Whereas with the obsolete copper network they can only have it if they are close to an exchange and if not too many are shoved on to one line. When more than 4 people watch Iplayer a 2meg capacity is fully used up, and 70:1 contention means up to 70 can be fighting for bandwidth. So my definition of broadband is firstly fibre infrastructure, and secondly sensible contention ratios, and thirdly the speed people are prepared to pay for. Interesting debate, wonder if anyone else will join in?
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