Looking back from today’s current fiber optic capabilities, the early internet was not unlike the old telegraph. It offered dial-up connection at speeds of 2,400 bits per second — just .0024 Mbps! The FCC’s current asymmetric broadband baseline speeds are 25 Mbps/downstream and 3 Mbps/upstream.  Today’s many advanced – an expensive – broadband services offer 200 Mbps/downstream.

In 2019, it was estimated that in the U.S. only 30 percent of homes had access to fiber broadband services compared to Norway and South Korea with over 80 percent access, and Spain, Portugal and Japan that were above 90 percent.

The FCC estimated that, in 2019, 24.7 million Americans didn’t have home access to broadband. John Kahan, Microsoft chief data analytics officer, warned that the FCC estimates were “vastly undercounts.” He noted that Microsoft data indicate that almost 162.8 million people “are not using the internet at broadband speeds.”

Others have raised similar concerns as those expressed by Microsoft’s Kahan. Former FCC attorney Gigi Sohn estimated that some 141 million people in the U.S. lack access to fixed broadband at speeds of 25 Mbps, the FCC’s broadband standard. Another report estimates that “42 million Americans, including a quarter of rural residents, lack access to broadband internet — and this doesn’t even include the people who don’t have broadband because they can’t afford it.”

More at CounterPunch.