FCC Speed Standard that Ajit Pai Never Updated is Too Slow, GAO Report Says (arstechnica.com) 66
The Federal Communications Commission broadband standard that was implemented under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler in 2015 and never updated by Ajit Pai is now "likely too slow,"
according to a government report issued last week. From a report: The Wheeler-led FCC in January 2015 updated the agency's broadband standard from 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream to 25Mbps downloads/3Mbps uploads. The increase was opposed by broadband-industry lobbyists and Republicans, including Ajit Pai, who was then a commissioner and later served as FCC chairman throughout the Trump administration. Pai never updated the 25Mbps/3Mbps standard in his four years as chair. In his last annual broadband-deployment report issued in January 2021, Pai concluded that "fixed services with speeds of 25/3Mbps continue to meet the statutory definition of advanced telecommunications capability."
Only two teams in American Politisports (Score:1, Troll)
Us or Them. And you don't get to pick the team either, only the general manager.
-dk
Fast enough (Score:5, Informative)
50 MBit is probably fast enough, provided that the connection would meet that speed 99% of the time, and also that there would be no throughput limits. It's not the 50 mbit that's the problem. It's that most people aren't getting what's advertised, and when they do, they go through their allotted throughput 20 days into the month.
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25 Mbps is probably "fast enough" for most internet users, wait for it, IF AND ONLY IF, they ACTUALLY GET 25 Mbps.
Odds are, if you are on this forum, you are not included in *most* internet users.
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I don't even get 25Mbps and it's fast enough for streaming and browsing the web and most everything someone needs (ok, the family has to agree to watch the same streaming service and not host a Tor site...). Getting faster than that will significantly increase the cost without much noticeable benefit to me.
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It would significantly increase the cost to you, but not so much the cost to provide it.
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Maybe per user, not per household. 25Mbps down isn't great for a lot of current tech (e.g. YouTube 4k is around 40-50Mbps, or 60 with HDR), and the upload speed will make handling even medium size files frustrating (e.g. working from home).
The focus on speeds is wrong though, the focus should be on technology. Get fibre everywhere you can, stop messing about with copper and slow radio links. Open it up to everyone.
Before someone says fibre is too expensive, you have phone lines to most places.
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The biggest problem I have is working from home. I do a lot of data analysis, and sometimes move terabytes of data around. That's when I feel the pain of slow internet. However, the vast majority of people don't do that.
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Re:Fast enough (Score:4, Interesting)
Allotted Throughput? What's that?
What's wrong with 100 up/ 100 down, no limiits /reasonable price?
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Allotted Throughput? What's that?
What's wrong with 100 up/ 100 down, no limiits /reasonable price?
Like that will ever happen, Comrade.
Re:Fast enough (Score:4, Interesting)
It can. And it does... in countries with less corruption where they don't put crooks who used to lobby for telecoms in charge of regulating them.
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Let's not forget that the standards set by the FCC must apply to rural areas as well. It's far from cost effective to provide 100/100 service to areas where the population density is one house every few square miles. The US Federal Government likes to work on a one-size fits all basis. They apply this to broadband standards, they apply it to minimum wage, they apply it to nearly everything. It's one of the reasons why a big, over-reaching Federal government is so inefficient and messes things up more th
Re:Fast enough (Score:5, Insightful)
It's far from cost effective to provide 100/100 service to areas where the population density is one house every few square miles.
You, the American Taxpayer have already paid for it. In fact you've paid for it several times, but the ISP monopolies didn't provide it and the regulators allowed them to get away with that.
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I guess I should thank my lucky stars. I honestly have the exact opposite situation.
My internet service is through a relatively small telecom co-op that covers several counties surrounding their HQ. I live ~4 miles from the closest town of about 400 people, roughly 30 miles from the co-op HQ. My house is literally surrounded by cropland as far as the eye can see in any direction.
About 5 years ago they trenched fiber up to my house, free of charge. They installed an indoor ONT along with battery backup t
Re:Fast enough (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, but other countries do have rural areas too, you know. But they don't seem to suffer from the same problems we do. Granted, I've not had first-hand experience with rural residential *wired* connections; but the wireless internet speeds I've had in Middleofnowhere Japan, Crotchrot Germany, Armpit France and Peopleactuallylivehere? South Korea, were as good as, if not better than, what I've sometimes had in NYC, LA, SF, or even (ironically) Cupertino, right here in the US. So it's not just a rural versus urban thing. It's a systematic corruption thing. We can do better.
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Come to Canada it you want to appreciate your cheap fast internet and cheap cell plans. I pay about C$100 ($70) for a 250 GB quota at about 10 down and 2 up (government subsidized for being rural), it varies as it is over subscribed LTE. Cell has got cheaper, C$25 for unlimited calling on a pay as you go plan with 250 MB's of data at 3G speeds.
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And airports
And freeways
And bank fraud laws
and pretty much everything that works in this nation
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I pay for 75/7.5 Mbps and test at 85/8 Mbps. For $50 CAD a month. I am satisfied with them.
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So 10 times the speed I get in BC for a C$100 with a 250GB cap, rural internet from Telus over LTE. I'm about 50 miles east of Vancouver, so not that rural.
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So 10 times the speed I get in BC for a C$100 with a 250GB cap, rural internet from Telus over LTE. I'm about 50 miles east of Vancouver, so not that rural.
Also in BC, and probably not far from you. Might be time to apply for Starlink. Also check out AEBC.com as that is who I get my internet through.
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I'm in the hills north of Mission (Steelhead), didn't even get power here until the '50's and there's enough trees that Starlink likely wouldn't work too well.
The good news is that Telus is going to be putting in fibre here in the fall, which should lower the bill and fix the speed problems, though I do hate Telus.
I'd imagine that AEBC wouldn't be available here.
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I believe AEBC resells Telus as well. Not that it would make much difference, but it does avoid the pain of actually giving Telus money directly.
I believe Teksavvy does more on the Fibre reselling side. (Although it has been a while since I last looked into this.)
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Hello neighbour,
My guess is that Telus won't hook up the fibre without a 2 year contract along with the purchase of an expensive modem type thingy. For the LTE connection, I had to pay $300 (12.50 for 24 months) for a crappy internet hub that they sold for $150 on their site and Koodo sells for $50 with a $10 home phone plan. The best (not) part was after the 2 years was up they raised my fee by $15 due to not being on a contract, bastards.
After the 2 year contract, it would be worth checking out AEBC.
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It amazes me that there are still caps out there...
I pay $89 (us) for 1 Gbit symmetric with no cap over Verizon FiOS. I guess it really depends where you live. I live in the suburbs of Baltimore, which is pretty built up, but not as much as a city, so it has higher than rural density, while not being so dense it makes it hard to run cables.
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Erh... that's what I have.
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50 MBit is probably fast enough, provided that the connection would meet that speed 99% of the time, and also that there would be no throughput limits. It's not the 50 mbit that's the problem. It's that most people aren't getting what's advertised, and when they do, they go through their allotted throughput 20 days into the month.
My bigger problem is upstream badwidth (for zoom calls and uploading files to corporate servers) -- I upgraded to the fastest tier my provider offers, 1000mbit downstream.... but it has only 10 mbit upstream. I'd much rather have 100/100mbit than 1000/10mbit. My wifi network tops out around 250mbit/second, so the only reason I have more than that is to get slightly better upstream.
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Just say no to video calls on Zoom. There's no need for everyone to be sending video of them sitting at home. Voice is more than enough with occasional screen/document sharing.
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Just say no to video calls on Zoom. There's no need for everyone to be sending video of them sitting at home. Voice is more than enough with occasional screen/document sharing.
Problem solved then, I just need to stop using technology the way I want to because some guy on Slashdot said it's better that way.
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No video I could live with, but live presentations are pretty much a requirement when you try to explain to some programmer why his spiffy new gimmicky page is a security nightmare.
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100/100 Mbps should be the minimum target today, everything lower than that is entirely artificial.
Just put a tax on every ISP subscription that's not coming up to 90% of that on average or 80% of that during high load situations.
If it's getting more expensive to serve slow as F internet to people than to give them the real deal then it'll be a factor of economy for the ISPs to make sure their nets are healthy. And with healthy nets you'll also be able to create an environment where startups can actually th
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50 down isn't any use if you have some crappy uplink speed.
That's what we had with Centurylink in AZ and the internet downlink would die due to ack congestion whenever the Tesla tried to upload video.
We switched to Bluewave, a symmetric wireless ISP and it's worked fine ever since.
Meanwhile, back in civilized Oregon, we get a gigabit symmetric over fiber, which seems to be plenty, except when transferring buggerbytes of data.
Ya think? (Score:5, Funny)
And in other news, experts report "rain is wet."
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The...broadband standard ... is now "likely too slow,"
And in other news, experts report "rain is wet."
"Citation needed"
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Seriously. At this point, it's not news anymore when Ajit Pai gets something wrong. Rather, there should be articles when (or if) he ever actually manage to get something *right* for a change. That oxygen-waster is more defective than a broken clock.
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Sorry to break it to you, but Ajit Pai hasn't been FCC chairman since January of this year, when Biden appointed Jessica Rosenworcel (who's been on the FCC since May, 2012) to serve as acting chairperson. So his opportunity to "get something right for a change" has expired; now it's someone else's turn to be wrong all the time.
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Everything Pai did whilst FCC Chair, he got 100% right. Every. Single. Thing.
The qualifier is that Pai's objectives were not to support the best interests of the citizens of the United States, but the interests of the cartel of telecommunications companies that effectively control all access to the Internet in the United States, including the determination of things like "acceptable throughput s
This relates to small business (Score:5, Informative)
The GAO report deals with small business. 25/35 down - 3 up is indeed too slow for any business. If you're doing VoIP plus Square/CC processor plus online SOHO like Google Docs/etc... Your pipe is going to be fully saturated the vast majority of the time for business needs. That's not even getting started if you want to offer customer wifi or anything like that. And if you are a small business with multiuser, the minimum isn't going to come close. But of course that begs the question, are there any ISP small business packages being offered at the FCC minimum? I get it, the FCC minimum is way too low for small business, but if no one is offering a minimum small business package at the minimum, then they should set the minimum for small business Internet to something else without too much hassle. The problem being is that I don't believe the FCC has a bifurcated minimum. It's just the one speed for home use and business use.
But with all that said, before the bickering starts, it's important to note that the focus of the report was small business use case. That little tidbit seems to be missing from everything presented here on Slashdot.
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I'm a small business and I can still only buy 1mbit/s up. (The actual limit is around 0.85mbit usually.) I'm not exactly in a rural area either. In most of the continental US, getting a whole 3mbit/s upload assigned to you without paying for a dedicated T2 line is a myth.
Re:This relates to small business (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is why we need standards. If offsite backups are to be a thiing that most businesses do as a matter of course, they need to be able to buy faster upload speeds for a reasonable sum..
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Small business often has more options for internet than a typical home user. Yes, the small business solutions cost more, but the plans exist for them. At home, you usually have a choice of only one reasonable speed ISP, sometimes not even that if you're rural or in a lower income area of a city.
Google Docs saturates a 35Mbs link???? (Score:3, Insightful)
25/35 down - 3 up is indeed too slow for any business. If you're doing VoIP plus Square/CC processor plus online SOHO like Google Docs/etc... Your pipe is going to be fully saturated
How on earth is Square + google Docs going to saturate a 35 Mbs down link...
You could easily use that speed even for video conferencing. For docs plus business applications, even 25 Mbs would work really well. I know because I have worked remote with far lower speeds thanks to poor cellular networks, and things still worked OK.
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That was part of what I was saying. (Score:1)
Arenâ(TM)t most of them advertised as up to?
Yeah but that was part of what I was saying, the problem is not really that speed which works, the problem is that most providers cannot really maintain that speed...
Though even with the dips they realistically have from those peak levels, a 35Mbs connection is plenty fast for Google Docs and Square and honestly even Zoom... Zoom is fairly efficient and can work (if choppily) over poor connections. I used to be in a meeting every week that did zoom meetings
Re:Google Docs saturates a 35Mbs link???? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the 3mbps up that becomes the bottleneck. Especially since 3 marketing mbps is likely to be 1 mbps as measured.
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But then that's all just part of the War on Small Business, so no surprise there.
Okay I have to just say, "Ewww" did you just promo a Carol Roth book? The thing that gets me the most about her is that she is literally everything that she complains about. It's like when Warren Buffet says that the rich aren't taxed enough and then just trails off like, "oooohh I guess I'll just have to continue to be rich. Woe is me". And yeah that book, is just a money grab. She nor any of the investment capital she manages works with commoners, so her writing a book about the salacious abuse of th
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No, VoIP, Square, and Google Docs are nice small applications that will perform well over 25/3.
VoIP even fully uncompressed is around 64kbps - the same data rate as a single ISDN channel or a channel on a T1. Sure, you can run the high bandwdith codecs for better sound quality, b
third world USA (Score:3, Interesting)
The local CAT scan and imaging clinic finds it cheaper and easier to burn the data onto a DVD and have a courier express it to the doctors on the same day. Wonder how much bandwidth is used by 4x CT scan machines ?
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Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. –Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981
So the bottom line is that for raw bandwidth, the internet will probably never beat SneakerNet. Of course, the virtually infinite bandwidth would come at the cost of 80,000,000-millisecond ping times. -- XKCD "What if?" on FedEx Bandwidth [xkcd.com]
Re:third world USA (Score:4, Interesting)
It's neither cheaper nor easier, it's just what they're used to.
I actually built a bridge product for CT machines to send securely over the Internet about twenty years ago. Hospitals gladly paid $2500 for them as Fedex was about $42 a pop. This was to replace a CD-burning robot I had programmed before.
But other hospitals "don't support that" so they kept sending us discs by Fedex, one parcel per patient, even on a busy day.
Data was in the tens to hundreds of megabytes and on a pair of T1's took 15-20 minutes usually.
These hospitals still depend on FAX machines tooday, and insist they're more secure than PGP. It doesn't have to make real-world sense because they have a consensus among people who don't know better.
monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has slow Internet compared to most developed nations. This is because of lack of competition. Your ISP does not have to compete to take your money, you'll pay whatever they ask for whatever they offer because that is all you can get.
I can't believe how many people in this thread seem to be in the 'what they piss on me is enough' camp. Did you even notice that you are getting screwed? Sorry, that hand in my wallet to get pissed on is not good enough.
Re:monopolies (Score:5, Funny)
The US has slow Internet compared to most developed nations. This is because of lack of competition. Your ISP does not have to compete to take your money, you'll pay whatever they ask for whatever they offer because that is all you can get.
Nonsense, in my neighborhood I have the choice of Xfinity or Comcast.
Yeah, well... (Score:2)
...that's one reason why many called him "Idjit Pai".
Not about speed (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not about speed. This is about which connections qualify for rural subsidies for broadband buildout. The slower the defined speed, the larger the area is that is classified as having broadband, and the cheaper it is for providers to add new qualifying service.
I'm actually a bit surprised there hasn't been a push by Comcast to define number that they think they can provide, but their competitors (especially StarLink) can't. On the other hand, if they're able to grab more federal cash with the current numbers, they'll try to keep it from changing.
There may be other programs that are based on this same definition, which may complicate the decisions of the big players as to what to lobby for. For example, if they are required to offer a low-cost broadband connection for low income households, then the lower the numbers, the more of those households will choose to pay the real rates instead of get the substandard service.
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To continue the game, the stakes will have to increase a lot, which could be fun to watch. Perhaps one of the things Comcast et al, could underestimate when raising ba
Re:Not about speed (Score:4, Informative)
And Big Cable had pulled this same strategy with the 25/3 decision; they lobbied to move the goal posts just beyond the very edge of where the primary competitor, DSL, could deliver. Which effectively took the incumbent local telcos off the playing field for subsidies. (Then they buried any and all mention of the lower-priced tiers so that customers who would have qualified for them knew nothing about them. Reps would straight out lie about their existence. Worse, the Feds let them write the program eligibility requirements such that if a customer attempted to pay the "real rates", but financially could not afford them, they became ineligible for the subsidized service unless they disconnected for 90 days and paid any outstanding balance. Which was completely impractical during the COVID lockdowns, so the fallout is going to get worse over the next year.)
As always: #FollowTheMoney
I don't blame the Capitalists, I expect greed. I blame the politicians and governing "elite" class...they're the ones who can't seem to understand for whom they work. They're clearly innumerate and blithely ignore potential consequences. (Well, we see how they've reacted to the Jan 6th "circus", perhaps they're not so blithe anymore, just wishfully obtuse.)
Arms race. (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest problem with internet speed is that it's relative. Every time speed goes up, sites start to cram in heavier elements such as 4k res images, 1080p60 autoplaying video, pulling content from over a dozen domains (just open any news site and click on NoScript and see how insane this is), extreme-resolution icons that are shrunk down to thumbnail size, and that's not getting into loading mile-long stylesheets and javascript in general.
This site [serebii.net] has been using the same layout since 2002, it loaded fast then and it loads fast now. The bullshit we put up with with hyper-bloated sites is like a landlord saying "Everyone gets a free $200/month? Well your rent just went up $200/month". It seems that every time we upgrade our technology, the dumbfucks that create the stuff the tech is for become greedier and start snatching at our resources like a fatty snatching at free donuts.
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More opportunities to ask you about your car's extended warranty.
Re: Arms race. (Score:2)