Speedy Internet Service Is an Issue Moving Fast for Incoming Administration - washingtonpost.com

President-elect Barack Obama's plan to give the entire country speedy Internet service while creating thousands of telecom jobs as part of his stimulus package has come up against a seemingly simple but contentious question: How fast is fast enough?

The Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, a trade group representing mid-sized carriers such as Qwest, is pushing for stimulus aid to build networks in rural areas offering download speeds of 1.5 megabits per second. Such a speed would do little to cure the herky-jerky quality of YouTube clips and would make transfers of e-mail with large attachments slow at best.

Labor union Communications Workers of America has called for tax credits or other incentives in rural and other underserved areas for speeds not much faster -- at 3 mbps, not enough to do video conferencing.

Members of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which includes Comcast, already had such upgrades in their business plans for this year, even though they have called for tax and other incentives that would help them extend their fastest service that would provide 50 mbps downloads, enough to watch high-definition video over the Web.

Speedy Internet Service Is an Issue Moving Fast for Incoming Administration - washingtonpost.com