The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to raise the minimum broadband internet download speeds to 100Mbps.

The minimum broadband speed metric in the United States today is 25Mbps of download speed, whereas the uploads are much lower at 3Mbps.

And as such, the chair of the FCC, Jessica Rosenworcel, is now proposing to raise the minimum broadband metric.

FCC Wants 100Mbps Minimum Broadband Speed

As per the latest news story by PC Mag, the commission wants to significantly bump it up to a faster speed of 100Mbps in hopes to ditch the current standard of only 25Mbps.

The FCC chair says that the new minimum speed that the commission proposes is part of its annual review of the current state of broadband internet in the country.

Rosenworcel argues that "the needs of internet users long ago surpassed the FCC's 25/3 speed metric."

The chairwoman of the commission further adds that the needs of folks online have also transformed "during a global health pandemic that moves so much of life online."

The COVID-19 pandemic, which struck the whole world by surprise, has forced people to stay in the confines of their homes, pushing employees to work from home and students to learn in front of a screen.

Not to mention that even reaching out to friends and family members has been greatly limited to video calls.

This, in turn, has massively increased our dependency on the internet.

And while things are slowly getting back to pre-pandemic times as we attempt to live with the coronavirus, our lifestyle has completely changed, normalizing hybrid work setup and video calls among our friends and family.

According to a recent report by Telecompetitor, the FCC chair went on to say that "the 25/3 metric isn't just behind the times, it's a harmful one because it masks the extent to which low-income neighborhoods and rural communities are being left behind and left offline."

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FCC's Minimum Broadband Metric

Despite that, the FCC missed out on raising the minimum broadband speed in the US during the height of the pandemic. So the commission appears to be working on it as we've got a better sense of the "new normal."

(Photo : Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images)
 Network cables are plugged in a server room on November 10, 2014 in New York City.

In fact, PC Mag notes in its report that the last time that it increased the minimum broadband metric speed was in 2015. The FCC raised it to 25Mpbs download speed and 3Mbps upload speed, which is still the current standard these days.

It was a radical move from the commission as the country was settling on the outdated 4Mbps download speed and 1Mbps minimum metric.

The government watchdogs and the senators in the US have since urged the commission to look into its minimum broadband metric, arguing that modern times demand faster internet.

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Written by Teejay Boris