Broadband: The next stimulus disaster

In its announcement of the broadband stimulus rules Wednesday, the U.S. government has defined broadband as 768 kilobits per second (kb/s) downstream, 200 kb/s upstream, signaling that any company applying for federal stimulus funds only has to meet the broadband standards of 1995.

By comparison, most cable modems connect at 6 Mb/s (almost 8 times as fast), with service reaching 10 Mb/s in some areas. Fiber-to-the-home connections transmit between 50 and 100 Mb/s...