The FCC has formally dropped its long-term goal of gigabit-speed internet for American households, erasing the 1,000 Mbps download and 500 Mbps upload benchmark the previous administration had set as an aspirational national target. The change came in the agency’s annual Section 706 report, released August 14.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who had signaled the move as far back as 2025, framed the gigabit goal as unfair to slower technologies like satellite and fixed wireless, arguing it wasn’t “technologically neutral.” The agency’s current legal standard for judging whether broadband deployment is “reasonable and timely” remains the 100 Mbps download, 20 Mbps upload benchmark the FCC adopted in 2024.
Why This Matters
The Section 706 report is more than symbolic. It’s the mechanism Congress created for the FCC to determine whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely way, and if the answer is no, the agency is required to take action to speed things up. By keeping the bar at 100/20 Mbps instead of a gigabit target, the FCC effectively certifies that current deployment levels, run largely by the same telecom companies that have received billions in federal subsidies for rural buildouts, are good enough to satisfy federal policy.
What Critics and Defenders Are Saying
Public interest groups that track broadband policy have questioned whether the agency adequately answered the specific deployment question Congress asked, rather than simply redefining the target. Supporters of the change argue that a gigabit-only standard disadvantages regions where fiber build-out isn’t economical and where satellite or fixed wireless is the more realistic path to getting people connected at all. Both sides agree on one thing: whichever standard the FCC uses becomes the yardstick for whether future subsidy dollars keep flowing to the same providers.
