US regulators will announce a major Internet policy this week to revolutionize how Americans communicate and play, proposing a dramatic increase in broadband speeds that could let people download a high-definition film in minutes instead of hours.
Dramatically increasing Internet speeds to 25 times the current average is one of the myriad goals to be unveiled in the National Broadband Plan by the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday.
The highly anticipated plan will make a series of recommendations to Congress and is aimed at spurring the ever-changing communications industry to bring more and faster online services to Americans as they increasingly turn to the Internet to communicate, pay monthly bills, make travel plans and be entertained by movies and music.
"This is a fairly unique event," said Paul Gallant, an analyst with Concept Capital. "The FCC really has never been asked to design a broad regulatory shift like this. Broadband is important and difficult because it threatens every established communications sector."
Some details of the plan have trickled out in the last few weeks including how to find spectrum to meet an anticipated explosion of handset devices capable of playing movies and music in addition to handling emails and voice calls.
But some carriers like AT&T Inc and Qwest Communications International Inc were irked last month when the agency's chief, Julius Genachowski, announced that the FCC would propose in the plan a goal of 100 Mbps speeds to be in place at 100 million American homes in 10 years. The current average is less than 4 Mbps.
In a sign of tension between the FCC and carriers, Qwest called it "a dream" and AT&T reacted by saying the FCC should resist calls for "extreme forms of regulation."
Since the FCC announcement, Cisco Systems Inc announced it would introduce a router that can handle Internet traffic up to 12 times faster than rival products. Google Inc has also gotten in on the hype, saying it plans to build a super-fast Internet network to show that it can be done. The FCC has praised both announcements.
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