FCC Proposes 100Mbps Minimum Home Broadband Speed

oxide7 writes "The US Federal Communications Commission unveiled a plan on Tuesday that would require Internet providers to offer minimum home connection speeds by 2020, a proposal that some telecommunications companies panned as unrealistic. The FCC wants service providers to offer home Internet data transmission speeds of 100 megabits per second to 100 million homes by a decade from now, Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said."

Re:That would be all well and good

[elrous0]

Letting market forces deal with the bandwidth would be fine if there were any real broadband competition out there. Most people in the U.S. have two broadband choices, DSL through their telco or cable through their cableco. A few (very few) are lucky enough to have a third choice (like Fiber optic through FIOS or similar). With competition being so limited, their is little incentive to build up the system--particularly to rural areas where a user's only broadband option may be satellite (if you can even call that "broadband").

My own situation is a good illustration. I live in suburb of a fairly large city. I have two options, a DSL line (max 3Mbs) or a cable line (max 12Mbps). The telco has had the ability to build out to 6Mbps for years now, but has never done so because they knew that the cableco would ultimately pass them anyway. The cableco built out to 12Mbps but charges ridiculously high rates for it. The cableco also has zero incentive to build anything beyond 12Mbps or lower their prices, because their only competition is limited to 3-6Mbps max. Basically, without some government prompting, or the arrival of something like FIOS (which has been deathly slow in deployment), there is absolutely no reason for any of my providers to do anything but sit on their asses and charge whatever they choose.

Re:That would be all well and good

[Anonymous Coward]

Except your precious market forces exert more pressure on telcos to provide the minimum amount of bandwidth for the maximum cost the market will bear. There's absolutely no incentive for them to provide a minimum guaranteed speed outside of regulation. Just look at their current lobbying efforts do define broadband down to under 200K.

Re:Why complain

[pitdingo]

Socialist incentives voted in by Republican controlled government will bankrupt the USA. Oh wait...

Re:Already there

[Arakun]

For $140/month you'd be able to get a 1000/100 connection in Sweden (if you live on the right address that is).

Re:That would be all well and good

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd - Where I live, 500 yards away, they have 8Mbps cable available for $40/mo. The best I can get is 512Kbps DSL for $85/mo.

They have Time Warner cable 500 feet from my house, but my only broadband option is satellite. TW won't run to my house or the other six on my street even if we carry the cost. It isn't a zoning issue, either, since we fall completely within the service area and are encircled by homes with TW cable; it's just TW being dicks.

Re:Already there

[zennyboy]

Which would be a good idea if it were true. Sadly it is not

Re:Already there

[Khyber]

"There was no governement mandate for Verizon to do this, and Verizon spent a boatload of money laying all the fiber."

Telecommunications Act of 1996 - we were supposed to have had 45mbit symmetrical a few YEARS ago.

Re:Already there

[NevDull]

Verizon's incentive is also driven by moving people off copper pairs, since they have to share those pipes with anyone who wants to lease them cheaply (CLEC, alarm company, etc). VOIP over fiber is very different from POTS from a regulatory standpoint.