If being able to download at 100Mb/s and upload at 50Mb/s is relevant to your interests, then you’ll be eager to learn about the new national broadband plan, released by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission last Tuesday.  It is a glimpse into the future of Internet access in the U.S., and there are quite a few exciting developments.

The plan weighs in at 376 pages and is chock full of policy advocating all sorts of changes, most of which will bore you to death.  If you want a more complete list of details, you can read their summary of the plan (pdf), but below I’ve covered the most interesting points that could effect you directly.

Insane Speed — The FCC wishes to have download speeds of 100Mb/s and upload of 50MB/s available to 100 million U.S. homes.  Unfortunately, their deadline for this to happen is 2020.  Still, 100Mb/s is a mouth-watering prospect by today’s standards.  Excuse me while I have a fit of nostalgia, but it doesn’t seem that long ago when I was listening to my 28k modem’s screeching, receiving huge phone bills, and waiting hours to download a 10mb game demo.

4Mb/s Broadband For All — If you live in the middle of nowhere, the FCC plans for you to have at least 4Mb/s broadband available.  While broadband is currently defined as 768kb/s of download speed, the FCC plans to change this to 4Mb/s of download speed and 1Mb/s of upload speed.  So if you’re part of the unlucky 5% that doesn’t have this already, it’s good news for you.

Affordable Prices — Having 100Mb/s available isn’t much good if it’ll cost your right arm to get it.  For this reason the FCC plan to take several measures to encourage competition between providers, such as making advertising less misleading and creating a “broadband nutritional label”, making it easy to see what you’re getting for your money.  However, some commentators have suggested that plan could actually result in an increase in cost.  Only time will tell.

Improved Wireless Network — The plan wants the U.S. to have the “fastest and most extensive wireless network of any nation”.  This is to be done by getting 500Mhz of spectrum for 4G providers.  Their hope is that 300MHz will become available within five years.  A potential stumbling block is where this 500Mhz of spectrum is going to come from and how the 4G providers are going to pay for it.  It seems that TV broadcasters are the primary target, but they’re not going to give it up easily.

So to borrow an old TV cliche, let’s “stay tuned” to see how this plan comes together.  It will no doubt face much debate and revision as Congress considers it.  Hopefully the best aspects of it will get passed before the proposed speed standards seem like the dial-up modem speeds we fondly remember today.