TPRC 2024: The 52nd Research Conference on Communications, Information and Inter

The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program in the U.S. has directed $42.45 billion in funding to accelerate the development and deployment of broadband infrastructure that meets specific service requirements such as minimum service speeds of 100 Mbps in the downstream and 20 Mbps in the upstream, peak hour latency below 100 ms, and network reliability of no more than 48 hours of outage time over any 365-day period. An often-overlooked element to the development of these requirements are the substantial policy implications they carry for determining preferred local access network technology options, preferred broadband service operators based upon their legacy technology positions, and the overall degree to which the nation’s households are unserved and underserved in terms of broadband access. Moreover, the performance requirements can influence, the design and evolution of the Internet architecture itself by influencing the selection or implementation of protocols and measurement metrics used by broadband network operators. To date in the U.S., Broadband Internet Access Service (BIAS) performance requirements have been developed in a number of different policy efforts such as the FCC’s annual Section 706 inquiries since the 1996 Telecom Act, part of the FCC’s universal service broadband funding programs since the National Broadband Plan (beginning with CAF Phase I and II, ACAM, and then RDOF), or adopted for broadband funding programs passed by Congress (such as Treasury’s Capital Project Fund and now the NTIA’s BEAD program).
This panel will investigate various policy concerns that arise from the lack of a consistent policy framework for defining BIAS performance requirements by addressing the following questions:

1. Prior Efforts to Characterize Performance-Related Policy Concerns.
2. How has Internet Performance Changed Over Time?
3. Increasing Importance of Latency in Internet Performance using Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF) Low Latency Low Loss Scalable Throughput (L4S) open standards.
4. Anticipated New Requirements from Emerging Internet Applications.
5. Putting It All Together: How Should Broadband Funding Be Linked to Internet Performance Requirements?