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The Federal Communications Commission is certainly upholding President Obama’s promise to fix some of the issues with Internet connections in the US.  Last week, there was the proposed ideas of Net Neutrality and this week it comes to broadband speed and penetration.  Turns out, as most of us already knew, the state of broadband in the US isn’t all that great.  The FCC at its September monthly meeting outlined the state of broadband in the country and how to make it better.  This is leading up to the national broadband plan it has to come up with by February 2010.

Turns out, according to the preliminary findings, the Internet is becoming more important for consumers, education, employment, and the all-important health care improvements.  Each of these reasons requires, at least in some part, broadband connection.  The preliminary findings, however, find that only about two-thirds of Americans have broadband at home, about 33 percent have access, but don’t use it, and another 4 percent don’t have access at all.  On top of that, broadband speeds can be up to 80 percent slower than what the ISPs advertise to their customers.

To fix these problems, the FCC says it will take $20 billion for universal 768 kbps - 6 Mbps and up to $350 billion for country-wide 100 Mbps, with, of course, added fees for reaching all the rural areas of the country.  Of course, these monetary figures come with no time tables, so it is hard to say when or if we will get that 100 Mbps across the country.  Even if it does take a long time, if the service is cheap enough, I’m sure we can all agree on getting 100 Mbps.  Of course, there are monetary issues with the plan, like the fact that the US is in massive debt, but it’s still nice to dream about 100 Mbps anywhere and everywhere in the country.

Read [PC Mag]