Chapter 4. Understanding broadband: addressing issues of capacity, speed and quality of service Box 4.1: Defining broadband – a moving target Although many national regulators and international orga-nizations, and maximum speeds attained by both DSL and cable services continue to rise. On the services and applications side, users are increasingly accessing data-intensive websites and services, which in theory would require a constant redefining of broad-band, including ITU and OECD, define broadband as a connection with downstream speeds greater than, or equal to, 256 kbit/s, there remains much debate as to how fast a connec-tion should be to qualify as broadband, and national definitions which remains a moving target from a user perspective. vary.4 The United States, for example, just recently redefined broadband as a “transmission service that actually enables an end user to download content from the Internet at 4 Mbps and to upload such content at 1 Mbps over the broadband provider’s network”.5 Some developing countries, for example Djibouti and Morocco, apply definitions of broadband that set a lower speed (128 kbit/s). However, most national broadband definitions are in line with the ITU/OECD definition. Specifying a minimum speed for broadband is complicated by the fact that both technologies and services/applications evolve. On the technology side, there are improvements that allow the same technology to provide higher speeds over time, Although it is obvious that both content and broadband technologies are evolving rapidly, one of the problems of changing the definition of broadband is that data are then no longer comparable over time, so time series would have to be discontinued. To acknowledge changes in the nature of the Internet (both in terms of content and technology), it seems more useful to analyse and benchmark countries according to broadband technologies, and/or speeds. ITU has collected fixed broadband subscription data by technology for many years, and in 2009 started gathering data by speed, with data collected for subscriptions providing speeds of 256 kbit/s to less than 2 Mbit/s, 2 Mbit/s to less than10 Mbit/s and 10 Mbit/s and above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rom narrowband to broadband *(\"(\"( ($ # ( $ , ( % # % % % $ ( % + ( + )4( 86 % % ( 6 # # (\"($ 86