FCC Proposes 100Mbps Minimum Home Broadband Speed 461
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."
Already there (Score:2)
Good thing I got fiber to my house a month ago in my house out in the sticks. Now I get 20Mbps down/4 mbps up and my ISP (Smithville Telephone) has plans going up to 100 down/25 up I think, although its like $140/month.
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It's not political laziness, it's monopoly laziness. In a lot of places you are
basically talking about 2 competing natural monopolies: phone and cable TV. If
one or the other aren't motivated then you will end up with a situation that is
wildly out of balance consumers being completely shafted.
Interestingly enough, such companies even go so far as to try to trick people into
believing that they are getting fiber to the premises. Really low.
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Re:Already there (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes, many people are Luddites. But don't they have that right? Jeez! We have a problem with some people forcing their opinions on us (taking religion out of schools, etc...) but we are perfectly comfortable forcing our opinions of what is "right" or "good" or "best for the community" on others.
Maybe we should treat others with respect and promote their rights instead of just force our opinions on them.
Re:Already there (Score:4, Informative)
"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 (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Already there (Score:4, Funny)
Yes but then I'd have to deal with you damn swedes. Sorry, no offense, but I recently had to work with a guy from Sweden who we'll just say was difficult.
That would be all well and good (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be all well and good if it were the Government's place to mandate minimum speeds. Frankly I'd rather see them focus on keeping the 'net free and neutral or forcing the telcos to expand broadband coverage like they were supposed to after all the incentives they got. Let market forces deal with bandwidth.
Re:That would be all well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That would be all well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
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. I offered to pay to have the line run up the hill to my home, and got an easement from the landowner to do so, but was stopped when I discovered that it wasn't legal to extend cable coverage outside the prescribed service area.
Get rid of the government "regulation" on this, and I'd have decent internet in a week.
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Maybe, maybe not.
There are an awful lot of properties that only have internet because the deals the ISPs negotiated with the municipalities require a certain (high) level of coverage. I obviously don't know your exact situation, but it's very possible that the only reason that 8Mbps extends within 500ft of you is that the next town over made them run it that far. They might have been happier keeping cable 10 miles from you and only serving the city center - but in order to access the profitable part of th
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That's what I'm driving at.
There's no way your neighbor would have internet without some kind of government mandate, i.e. regulation. So the question of whether you'd be able to bury your own cable in the absence of regulation is moot - there wouldn't be internet anywhere near you to tap into.
You're a case study why we need more - or at least more centralized government regulation of broadband.
Re:That would be all well and good (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an easy one to solve... I'd deal with that in a heatbeat. Find a reasonable neighbor, offer to pay for their interent access if they'll let you set up a wireless link. Plain old 802.11g with a couple of Yagi or "coffee can" directional antennas, and you're good for hundreds of feet. Better with 802.11n, but only if you're wiring for MIMO (2 or 3 antennas at either end, and issues with where they're placed if you're optimizing it).
I actually design radios in my day job, and one such device is a mesh router that can run up to about six miles. I've been really tempted to tap real broadband in neighboring towns... the frequencies used, illegal as hell, unless your're police or the military... but tempting anyway.
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Yeah, so the cost of upgrades required by the government come out of their asses right? If you think you are not going to be the one paying for the FCC-mandated upgrades, you are living in la-la land. Who do you think is going to pay for it, the isp? No, the customer will.
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(a) A mandate with a specific goal.
(b) Mileposts clearly specified for progress toward that goal.
(c) Follow through by Government regulators (wait, could this be that?)
(d) Payment per milepost acheived, due upon delivery not upon agreement to consider delivering.
Re:That would be all well and good (Score:4, Interesting)
Corps have industry trade groups and lobbyists, consumers have (in the USA) representatives and senators.
When it comes down to it, people decide what's ok and what's not. Corps are not people, consumers are. (except when it comes to campaign financing)
Having minimum standards sucks from the supply side, but their absence is much more damaging on the demand side. To use your analogy - ways to make flights cheaper would include doing away with seatbelts and emergency exits (the seals are a maintenance issue). Nobody uses them anyway. Also, would you even notice if aircraft inspections were reduced? The average consumer wouldn't either.
Re:That would be all well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a two way street. Consumers do whatever they can to squeeze corps. Corps squeeze consumers.
Money is power. Not having money anywhere on the scale of corporations, individuals have two real options. They can organize into unions and organizations; and put up with the corruption that results from concentrating power, or they can vote and the government gets involved.
The government does not need to get involved, they need to get out of the way by removing the monopoly cable companies enjoy.
The problem is most of the monopolies cable companies enjoy are the result of local and state government interference and of limited resourced apportioned by the feds. The feds not getting involved is tantamount to handing over control to the corporations who have too much money to not influence local governments. Moreover, local governments have good reason to get involved, since their involvement is the result of the disaster that happened when they did not get involved in the early days of power distribution. dozens of redundant lines making the place hideous and resulting in one line falling and taking down dozens of others, bringing everyone down to the reliability of the worst player. Learn your history lest you repeat it.
Sorry, there just isn't enough physical space or EM spectrum. The government either needs to handle data pipes the way they do roads, as a government utility, or they need to build the conduits for the pipes and charge data providers the cost.
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That's awesome, because it means that those of us who pack light no longer subsidize those of you who don't. Jet fuel is expensive, and since it takes more of it to tote your big fat bag around, I'm happy for you to pay for it.
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They lowered the carry-on size to something that lasts me three to five days if I pack dress clothes suitable for an interview, a week anywhere else. I think you need to recalibrate your idea of "tiny".
Re:That would be all well and good (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Real competition wouldn't work either, because no one gives two shits about running expensive fiber to decreasingly dense, and therefore less profitable exurbs. Everyone wants to serve commercial hubs, no one wants to serve small towns.
What we need is mandated, subsidized coverage at least at the state level with minimum speeds and common carrier provisions (meaning companies other the one that laid the cable can use the line.)
This is how we handled rural electrification and nationwide telephony, it should
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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:That would be all well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
Let market forces deal with bandwidth.
Yeah, because that really seems to be working out so far. Clearly the competition between the major providers is pushing them to improve and excel.
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Personally I don't think that for-profit government sanctioned monopolies should exist, but who cares what I think?
Re:That would be all well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
I see this is a sign that the government is realizing the importance of the internet to the future of commerce and national security.
Minimum speed mandates are the first step towards government-maintained infrastructure. By setting a target the telcos will be unable to reach, and buoying consumer expectations to expect this level of service soon, the door is opened for the government to implement solutions for upgrading or providing a portion of the telecommunications infrastructure themselves.
Frankly the telcos have nobody but themselves to blame. They took taxpayer money and instead of spending it on infrastructure upgrades to keep the US competitive with other nations, they sat on their collective asses raking in record profits while the quality of their networks and their customer satisfaction went to shit. If market forces worked, this would be unnecessary.
Re:That would be all well and good (Score:4, Insightful)
1. If you read the presentation [fcc.gov], he's actually setting the 100 Mbps as a goal, and sets out some "recommendations" for ways to achieve it. No mandates yet.
2. 100Mbps in 10 years from now ought to be a dawdle. Hell, 100Mbps next week would be possible here if the Fios people would install to my building. Japan's average network speed [washingtonpost.com] right now is 50 Mbps. US companies know that it would cost them money to upgrade their infrastructure, and with most markets being historically-defined monopolies or oligopoloys, they have no incentive to compete.
3. Of course it's the government's place to mandate minimum speeds and other standards. What do you think the FCC does? "These frequencies use that standard with that much energy. This telephone exchange uses that protocol with these power standards at that transmission rate." They define "broadband" as minimum 750kbps (ha!). If they want to define the "High-Speed Broadband" label as minimum 100Mbps for clarity's sake, and encourage its adoption, that's exactly what they're there for.
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Time to stop making poor excuses. If the US has an old infrastructure, one can ask "WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO IMPROVE IT?".
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Arguably one of the few legal uses of the Interstate Commerce clause would be to set standard terminology so that consumers of products that pretty much always cross state borders have some idea of what the product name means.
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The providers will probably keep their pricing at a reasonable level. It's not advantagous to them, to price it beyond the reach of the average customer. They'd rather have 100,000,000 customers at $20/mo, than 1,000 customers are $200/mo.
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What I see happening if this really does pass, is service levels for different pricing. Everyone gets a 100mbps connection, but the base plans only guarantee 1mbps (in theory 100 people or so per 100mbps uplink, in practice possibly thousands of customers). The more expensive plans would allocate more and more of the core bandwidth to each customer. That way, they cou
Re:That would be all well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
can we please drop the average consumer crap? Usage trends for internet are completely unpredictable even on a year to year basis, age group basis, or otherwise. So when people think DSL speeds are good enough, they're trying to define average consumers. It doesn't exist. This is like saying "the average user isn't a gamer" or "the average user just burns bandwidth on youtube" or "the average user just browses the web and sends email".
Also, 10 years from now 100mbps might be not that different from how dsl is now. Really, we already have 50-100mbps connections available in some areas (slowly becoming less spotty), so 10 years from now might be 300mbps or something. Gigabit routers = non issue there. Heck, everyone has at least a 10/100 router at home which can (and is specced to do so) handle 100mbps.
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My router is an Apple Airport Extreme, and it says 10/100/1000 right here on the box.
So, 10/100 = 0.1 mbps / 1000 = 0.0001 mbps, or 12.5 bytes per second! ...
Oh wait...
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Indeed. Imagine what would happen if the power company could only deliver enough power for the average consumer. There's a reason our utilities are designed to deliver more than they expect people to use at *peak*. Internet access should be no different.
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True, but the average consumer is also pretty happy at DSL level speeds (Or at least won't justify spending more for the 100mbps service).
The average consumer was pretty happy at dial up speeds until they got a taste of something faster. Every day this becomes more and more true as more and more media rich services and web interfaces present themselves. Downloading music and watching video on line is now common for broadband users. Accordingly, users will continue to notice speed improvements up until they hit the endpoint service provider throttles or become saturated.
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Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
...I'm going to have to side with the ISPs on this one. I think requiring them to offer high-speed internet to that many people is realistic by 2020, but at that speed? That's pushing it...
The only way to really get ISPs off their collectively slow asses is to increase competition. Too many areas of the country are stuck with only one or two choices...which isn't a choice at all.
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Of course, most likely nothing will come of this so it doesn't really matter.
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Or we're stuck with no choice whatsoever because our area isn't deemed profitable enough to even run cable television through! I don't understand why the telephone lines, water pipes, and power lines can run down my road just fine, yet no one is willing to offer anything outside of dial-up and satellite internet access. The government needs to step in and get the ball rolling on exactly this type of thing.
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Agreed. Government loves investing in worthless crap, how about something worth investing in for a change? Look at the billions of dollars they waste on a yearly basis. It would be interesting to see how much it would cost to set up a fiber-optic network throughout the country.
Yes yes, concerns about the government setting up that kind of network...that's why the money would just be given to the ISPs on the (very) strict condition that it is used to build the necessary infrastructure. But of course that
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...I'm going to have to side with the ISPs on this one. I think requiring them to offer high-speed internet to that many people is realistic by 2020, but at that speed? That's pushing it...
At worst, I suppose it amounts to "um, yeah, we're gonna make you replace all those ancient copper lines with fiber now, kthxbye". Which, given their government-granted monopoly status and subsidies, doesn't seem like such a bad idea.
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Depending on your ISP, you may be able to run a server by just asking them to unblock port 80 -- they may even do it for free. You never know until you try*.
*Well, unless you read the fine print that is. And even then theory != practice.
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but at that speed? That's pushing it...
Really? In our area, the ISP announced a few years ago that they would not lay any new copper. All connections are now fiber only. That includes TV, telephone, and internet (with 20/2 and 100/10 services). The cost in laying fiber is not much different from laying copper, and the bandwidth is much higher, especially in the boonies.
This was a wise decision, as the "last mile" is the hardest to upgrade, so putting in capacity for the future means that it will not become a bottleneck for some time. The optic
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If you lived in Romania, you could pay to use your apartment's fiber-optic line via an Ethernet connection. For $4 Euro per month, my friend gets uncapped transfers that max out to 10MB/s inside the country. The very worst speeds I've seen were 500kb/s while there.
Now you could say "But we have many more people", well yes, but this is a country who was communist not too long ago. You also have much more money. For example, a good wage is $10,000 euro per year for a skilled worker with a degree. So at this p
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What on Earth is $x Euro? Do you mean €x?
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The bigger the monopoly the bigger the fail.
Bad Idea. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Yeah, they would certainly use it as an excuse to jack up prices. They'd complain that government meddling only hurts the consumer and raise prices through the roof to ensure that that's the case.
I do think that the internet should be considered a basic utility and that internet access should be guaranteed like water and electricity; however, I think that the right to online access ends at e-mail and Slashdot. 100 Mb/s is nice, but I'd say 1 Mb/s would be more appropriate for a mandated rate goal.
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Bad idea. Have you seen what most ISPs charge for 15?
My neck of the woods, I can get 50Mb/20Mb fiber connection for $80/month today. Can also get WiMax services up to 150Mb/150Mb, so it's not really a matter of the technology either, even "way back" here in 2010...
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I am sure if I contacted any ISP right now I could get 100Mbps, if I had enough money.
Google! (Score:2)
Looks like the internet in that little country called the US will finally catch up with the rest of the world... Maybe i'll finally get some speed from US P2P users now...
Re:Google! (Score:4, Insightful)
It'll only catch up when we unbundle, which will never happen as long as they have lobbyists.
U.S. leading the world on internet development?!? (Score:2)
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That would require that the U.S. take the world lead in internet development. It's completely unrealistic to expect something so unprecedented.
Clearly a humorous post but according to some metrics (The Connectivity Scorecard) the United States just lost the telecommunications lead to Sweden [reuters.com] as they quietly eke past us.
1984 (Score:4, Funny)
Because 100mbps is the bandwidth required for the telescreens?
because its too hard (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how we Americans think its fine that the rest of the world is surpassing us in everything else, bandwidth included.
World's most powerful nation going at the speed of fail.
We're going to MARS! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the IT equivalent of Bush's "We're going to Mars" announcement.
It will be followed by actions which will make it impossible. (The equivalent of cutting Nasa's budget and programs)
So my money is on...reducing competition, letting infrastructure fail, and killing net neutrality for the Trifecta.
Who'll give me Vegas odds on these?
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The Dept, of Agriculture will soon propose... (Score:5, Funny)
The next round of government rule-making... (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new pony-mandating FTC overlords and our rainbow-mandating EPA overlords. Every American should have the government-granted right to upload pictures of their pony galloping under a rainbow at 100 Mbps speeds!
ISPs almost sound like trolls (Score:2)
From the article:
"First, we don't think the customer wants that. Secondly, if (Google has) invented some technology, we'd love to partner with them,"
Almost sounds like a troll to me. I think most consumers would love a 100Mbps connection -- assuming it was reasonably priced. That being said, Verizon already offers FiOS at speeds up to 50Mbps, so 100Mbps isn't that much of a stretch.
Sadly, I'm stuck in an area where it's either ADSL1.x or cable.
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"Up to 50 Mbps" != "50Mbps".
Good start (Score:2)
Now if only they could force companies to unbundle their services and keep the cost proportional to the service. By that I mean, if they bundle tv, phone and internet for $99/month, they can offer each service for $33/month.
Which is not the case at the moment. I cannot get internet service from either Verizon or Comcast (my only two providers) for $33/month at the same speed as they offer for their bundled service.
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Just pass the amendments already (Score:2, Insightful)
WTF is the FCC doing, making suggestions about my dealings with my local ISP over a link that doesn't cross state lines?
That rhetorical question has kind of a quaint ring to it. Let's face it: America has certain expectations from their government, regardless of legal concerns. So let's just legalize it. I propose two constitutional amendments:
Congress shall have the power to do whatever they think is a good idea. All previous amendments conflicting with this, are hereby repealed.
The right to be subject
Transfer limits, not speed! (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty soon, we'll have 1Gbps connections to-the-home with 1GB monthly transfer limits. I can't wait. I'll be able to transfer my monthly quota in mere hours now!
Speeds doesn't matter one god damn when usage is so restricted. Telcos and Commcos win again!
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Won't happen (Score:2)
Until we repeal the government mandated monopoly. Or they'll just redefine 6 Mbps as 100 Mbps. I certainly wouldn't put such douchebaggery passed Comcast, I mean Xfinity, to do so.
Why complain (Score:5, Insightful)
In the mid-90s the Telecom industry was given 200 billion [pbs.org] dollars to roll out 45 megabit internet across the country. Nothing ever came of it, and the telecom industry got to pocket that $200 billion.
Sounds to me that the telecoms should know a good thing when they hear it.
This. A thousand times this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically everyone with a phone in the USA has been paying an extra fee for decades now to fund rollout of broadband to rural areas. Not only have the rural areas not gotten it, even a lot of built-up areas don't have it. In fact, when municipalities have tried to create their own high-speed networks, the telcos have gone so far as to sue to prevent it. Taking $200 billion to do something, then making efforts to prevent that something from even happening? Evil.
I'd like the FCC to ask the telcos where the $200 billion went... and if the telcos want to claim things are impossible, maybe the FCC can ask them to give that $200 billion back, since we all know there's a company (Google) that's chomping at the bit to install super-fast FTTH.
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Which is exactly why I hope they mandate this, and don't give them any money to do it.
cap (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm. 100 megabits/sec. At that rate, my 2 gig cap would be reached in
2000 megabytes * 8 bits/byte / 100 megabits per sec = 160 seconds aka 2 minutes 40 seconds
100Mbps minimum is a start... (Score:2)
The truth is by 2020, everyone should have 10 Gbps fiber to the home. Anything less will make internet speed the limiting factor.
Let's also remember that Sweden had common, affordable 100Mbps to the home almost a decade ago.
Interesting (Score:2)
What's next? (Score:2)
Besides FCC not having authority to do this, why is this the government's job? What's next, mandating home delivery of groceries? This is government run amok.
100MBit for 1/3 of the pop by 2020? (Score:2)
Thinking back 10 years, we had 56k around here 10 years ago. Now a days 10-16 MBit is very common (central Europe) in urban regions (where around 1/3rd of the population lives). Projecting that to 2020, we'll be at 200-300 MBit. If the US does not manage to upgrade their infrastructure to at least 100MBit in residential areas by then, it will probably declared a developing country or something.
Hell, around here we even have most of the fibre laid already, just have to get the switch from copper based endpoi
This should have been done years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
IEEE-USA has been advocating bi-directional gigabit broadband for several years. The telcos have offered dumbed-down, legacy speeds because they are trying to become more closely associated with the entertainment industry than with telecommunications. The entertainment and other content industries do not want the competition that comes when every subscriber can become an originator.
The failure to mandate that broadband is at least 100 mbps places the US way behind other countries and makes our innovators much less able to develop new concepts in broadband-based applications. That is why Japanese who come to the US are said to feel like they are entering a telecommunications third world.
The FCC is moving to have the US join the developed telecommunications world.
Good!!!
Not that it would really matter (Score:2)
and why 100Mbps, it seems so excessive, I find my 5Mbps adequate. And what about upload, if their is not a similar increase in upload speed you would not see any benefit form 100Mbps unless you download from many many servers at the same time. With 100 Mbps you will be able to run out of bandwidth for the month in a few minutes.
And their is probably a lot more important things they could be going for: net neutrality, inc
Do they also mandate maximum prices? (Score:2)
I bet ISPs will be rubbing their hands together over this: "100mbps minimum? No problem - just make everybody pay for a T6 connection!"
Linear vs Exponential growth (Score:3, Interesting)
Today I have a 20mb cable modem from RCN (which costs nearly 2x as much as the 1.5mb line I used to have).
Each of these were the fastest consumer lines available to me.
100mb in 10 years sounds rather unambitious really. Consumer usage (I'm assuming) is probably growing at a rate akin to Moore's Law. There would be 6 and 2/3 cycles of Moore's Law in 10 years. My 20mb line should turn into a 1300mb line in 10 years at this rate and consumer usage will probably meet the demands.
Unfortunately by this logic I should have a 96mb line available already, which isn't true at least where I live
Re:FCC: Setting High Goals (Score:5, Interesting)
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You are clearly a conspiracy theory nut job.
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> Umm... Where in the Constitution does it authorize the federal government to do this?
The ICC of course. The fact that all of the major players are engaging in activities across state boarders makes it a pretty obvious fit. You don't even have to bend it out of shape too much.
Where am I? Where is this thing called Slashdot?
Re:DigiTechGuy (Score:4, Insightful)
You must be new here.
The Constitution grants the Federal Government the right to pass laws to deal with some things not specifically addressed in the Constitution, and the States rights to deal with others.
Given that radio waves, much less fiber optic internet, had not yet been discovered in 1787, this is a very clear case in which one needs not simply heed the Constitution, but all of the law built on top of it since.
You may now return to drinking that teabagger kool-aid.
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100 Mbps? Does the FCC not realize that 99% of all residences only have copper cabling to them (either twisted pair or coax)? It is impossible to get 100 Mbps out of such a transmission medium over any meaningful distance. The only solution to this would be to overbuild the entire telecommunications infrastructure with fiber optic cable.
Maybe you don't realize, but yes. That is exactly what they're going for here. A complete overhaul of the US telecommunications infrastructure.
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100 Mbps? Does the FCC not realize that 99% of all residences only have copper cabling to them (either twisted pair or coax)? It is impossible to get 100 Mbps out of such a transmission medium over any meaningful distance. The only solution to this would be to overbuild the entire telecommunications infrastructure with fiber optic cable. Phone and Cable companies aren't going to like that--they already have billions of dollars invested in the current copper plant out there.
Is 100 Mbps feasible? Yes. Is it feasible by 2020? Yes, but certainly not to everyone.
OK, first of all, I'm thinking your "99%" estimate is a bit out of whack. Not only am I seeing every NEW subdivision layed out with fiber everywhere, but they're also working quickly to retrofit a LOT of areas with fiber.
Also, my cable provider in the area is offering speeds upwards of 40Mb over coax now, so giving technology another decade, I'm pretty confident we'll be able to mux a 100Mb stream across existing coax infrastructure, if we can't already do it today.
Lastly, the "billions of dollars invested
The AC has a good point. (Score:3, Interesting)
There are 350 million people in the US - and probably more than 400 Million by 2020. This mandate means that 75% of the population will be excluded from the mandate, and probably put on the back burner to make it law. I have decent internet (3Mb/$25) but there are folks just 20 miles down the road who pay more than $70/mo for 384k/128k service.
I like the thought, but I'd rather see better regulation of what the various terms mean. "Unlimited," or any term which suggests that there is no cap on download quan
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You realize that 400 KiloBytes per second is actually about 3 Megabits per second? Add in network overhead, and unless you've got a particularly fat pipe it might actually be your pipe that is getting saturated.
Either way, considering most businesses struggle to get a fast enough pipe to them (including ISP's, sadly), 100Mbps to everyone should help everyone.