WASHINGTON, Sept. 15, 2025 \u2014 The Fiber Broadband Association is urging the Federal Communications Commission to keep pushing for gigabit symmetric broadband standards, citing rapid expansion of fiber networks and growing consumer demand for higher speeds.<\/p>\n
In comments<\/a> filed last Monday in response to the FCC\u2019s 19th Section 706 Notice of Inquiry<\/a>, the trade group said the FCC should continue high-cost support programs in areas where deployment would not otherwise be economically feasible, while also pursuing permitting reforms to cut state and local barriers.<\/p>\n \u201cAccess to gigabit symmetric networks will be the norm,\u201d CEO Gary Bolton wrote, calling broadband today both \u201cdynamic\u201d and \u201cthriving.\u201d The group pointed to heavy private-sector investment, nearly $95 billion in 2023 alone and said competition is driving per-megabit prices down.<\/p>\n The association agreed with the FCC\u2019s proposal to \u201ctake a holistic view of the incremental deployment progress of advanced telecommunications capability\u201d and said the inquiry should be technologically neutral.<\/p>\n While fixed wireless and low-Earth orbit satellite services serve \u201cimportant niches,\u201d the FBA argued fiber remains the nation\u2019s \u201ccritical infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n The FBA pointed to market trends as the clearest benchmark. According to its data, there were 88.1 million fiber-to-the-home passings in the U.S.as of September 2024, with 76.5 million representing unique homes, about 60 percent of U.S. households. Of those, 35.1 million homes were connected to fiber.<\/p>\n The group said fiber deployment is projected to exceed 130 million passings by 2030, with major expansions from AT&T, Verizon, and Brightspeed already underway.<\/p>\n On the demand side, a 2023 study by Cartesian for ACA Connects found that 40 percent of residential internet subscriptions were for speed tiers of 500 megabits per second or higher, and more than 70 percent were for 200 Mbps or higher.<\/p>\n By the second quarter of 2025, data from OpenVault showed that 42 percent of households subscribed to 500 Mbps or faster service.<\/p>\n \u201cIn other words, fiber will be \u2018the\u2019 critical fixed broadband technology for both consumers and providers across the country,\u201d the FBA wrote. \u201cGigabit symmetric speed services have become the standard.\u201d<\/p>\n The association argued that if the Commission continues to rely on a 100\/20 Mbps benchmark, it will not accurately reflect current or future market realities.<\/p>\n \u201cBy benchmarking fixed broadband at 100\/20 Mbps, rather than a gigabit symmetric standard, [the FCC] will not be looking at where we are today, much less where we are going,\u201d the FBA said.<\/p>\n The group said Section 706 remains an important mechanism for guiding federal support programs, which have already helped bring broadband to about ten million locations over the past five years, with the BEAD program expected to reach five million more.<\/p>\n \u201cWe look forward to working with the Commission to promote policies that facilitate the deployment of broadband, including all-fiber networks, nationwide,\u201d said Bolton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, Sept. 15, 2025 \u2014 The Fiber Broadband Association is urging the Federal Communications Commission to keep pushing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1638,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-140200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}