Surprise ! Last month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which plays almost the same role in the United States as the CRTC in Canada, raised the bar on what it calls “high speed” just enough for the ‘Internet here is suddenly outdated.
In March, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel made an upgrade to data transfer rates that she said constitute what deserves to be called high-speed Internet access. These speeds are now 100 megabits per second (Mbit/s) for receiving data and 20 Mbit/s for sending data. These new thresholds are four times higher than those previously established in 2015, i.e. 25 Mbit/s for download and 5 Mbit/s for upload.
For the American federal agency, these are important figures: they establish a benchmark for government investment and financing programs.
A good target?
Because everything is political among our neighbors to the South, this new standard was not adopted easily. Two of the five representatives on the FCC board who voted on this measure — Republicans — voted against it: it was too fast for their liking. For others, including President Rosenworcel, the bar had to be raised. “It’s about time,” she said in a statement. “This will help us better identify which lower-income neighborhoods and rural communities are currently less well served [par les fournisseurs de services Internet]. »
With its new standards of 100 Mbit/s and 20 Mbit/s, the United States is now overtaking Canada. For us, we consider that a connection is high speed from 50 Mbit/s download and 10 Mbit/s upload.
The Canadian government has set a target of providing access to a high-speed Internet connection to 98% of households in the country in 2026, then 100% in 2030. Especially since the pandemic, Ottawa has discovered that several major economic sectors and social networks depended on a good Internet connection. We also realized that access to a fast and reliable connection was a question of competitiveness, because each country struggles to attract companies specializing in technologies and their investments, in particular.
In its official statistics, the federal government does not provide an overview of the share of Canadian households that have Internet access above 50 Mbit/s. That said, according to data from the specialized site Speedtest.net, at present, the average speed of an Internet connection in the world is 85 Mbit/s. In Canada, the average connection has a speed of around 180 Mbit/s. In the United States, its speed increased from 200 Mbit/s in 2022 to 240 Mbit/s last year.
Connecting all regions of the country to 50 Mbit/s high-speed Internet is the least we can do. And for these regions to have a service comparable to what is offered elsewhere, it may be necessary to raise the minimum thresholds for government programs.
At least, where they offer high speed, Canadian providers most of the time offer a choice of several speeds, most of them above 50 Mbit/s.
Nielsen’s law
The FCC went much further than quadrupling the minimum high-speed bandwidth. It set long-term targets of 1000 Mbit/s for receiving data and 500 Mbit/s for sending. Above all: the American federal agency estimates that this flow rate should be that obtained on the device we hold in our hands. This means that the Wi-Fi router, modem, and Internet service will all eventually need to exceed these speeds.
These requirements may seem ambitious, even exaggerated. After all, 100 Mbit/s is already enough to watch a movie in 4K resolution, make a video call on Zoom and listen to music. All this at the same time.
The FCC nevertheless bases its forecasts on what is called Nielsen’s law. Danish engineer Jakob Nielsen predicted several years ago that residential high-speed would be 50% faster every year. This fits with the evolution of the Internet services market observed between 1983 and 2003. In computing, we superimpose Nielsen’s law on Moore’s law (on the improvement of the capacities of computer processors) to determine where the limits of the data processing.
However, by virtue of Moore and Nielsen’s laws, the power of computer processors grows faster than the bandwidth capacity.
All in a world where artificial intelligence seems to want to conquer everything. And AI is a technology that is particularly demanding in both computing power and data transfer. The bottleneck therefore risks being a “high speed” which would be… too low. This is undoubtedly why the FCC is removing a brake which, according to it, would slow down technological innovation. AI is driving massive investment around the world, and the United States wants its share.
The Canadian government is also banking on innovation and advances in AI to grow its economy. The two billion dollars he wants to invest in creating the foundations of sovereign AI bear witness to this. Perhaps it will also have to review its definition of high speed. We wouldn’t want an all-Canadian generative AI that’s too slow to compete with its rivals elsewhere in the world, eh?