FCC Chair: Speed Standard of 25Mbps Down, 3Mbps Up Isn't Good Enough Anymore 131
Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel of the Federal Communications Commission proposes a new broadband standard of 100Mbps downloads and 20Mbps uploads, replacing the 2015's 25Mbps/3Mbps metric. From a report: "In today's world, everyone needs access to affordable, high-speed Internet, no exceptions," Rosenworcel said in the announcement today. "It's time to connect everyone, everywhere. Anything short of 100 percent is just not good enough." Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act requires the FCC to determine whether broadband is being deployed "on a reasonable and timely basis" to all Americans. If the answer is no, the US law says the FCC must "take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market."
The FCC's previous Section 706 reports analyzed availability and included data on adoption but didn't consider affordability. In her announcement today, Rosenworcel said she "recently shared with her colleagues an updated Notice of Inquiry that would kick off the agency's evaluation of the state of broadband across the country, as required by Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. Chairwoman Rosenworcel proposes that the Commission consider several crucial characteristics of broadband deployment, including affordability, adoption, availability, and equitable access, when determining whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion to 'all Americans.'"
The FCC's previous Section 706 reports analyzed availability and included data on adoption but didn't consider affordability. In her announcement today, Rosenworcel said she "recently shared with her colleagues an updated Notice of Inquiry that would kick off the agency's evaluation of the state of broadband across the country, as required by Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. Chairwoman Rosenworcel proposes that the Commission consider several crucial characteristics of broadband deployment, including affordability, adoption, availability, and equitable access, when determining whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion to 'all Americans.'"
Depends (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on what you use it for. For a family of four it probably isn't. For a single person its probably good enough on a budget. For many small businesses that don't use it for video, but just for daily activities, is probably good enough.
Re:Depends (Score:5, Insightful)
Minimum should be 100/100 Mbps these days, no asymmetric speeds, that's a legacy from the ADSL era.
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It is still that way on cable for the same reasons it was on DSL. They want to use more of the line(s) for download because that is all the general consumer cares about.
Re: Depends (Score:3)
While thatâ(TM)s true, you would think that they could have figured out a standard by now that can observe the demand for upload/download at any one moment and adjust on the fly.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docsis_3.1 [wikipedia.org], 60% there with DOCSIS 4.0. There's a lot of work just to support 3.1, so there's a lot of users still stuck on 3.0. A lot of cable users have been getting DOCSIS 3.0 downstream speeds but only DOCSIS 2.0 upstream speeds. If you're some place that actually offers DOCSIS 3.1, you'll probably also get much better uploads.
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They do it so you can't/won't run a server on your end because of the crap upload speed. Any other reasons the ISP's cite are pure bull shit.
Re: Depends (Score:3)
Now I have the lowest speed package from my ISP. It is more than 100mbit down. That is fun, especially if you have fond memories of dial-up. I'd rather pay less and have a slower speed.
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I'm betting I pay a lot less than you and I could get gigabit for only a few bucks more a month.
Re: Depends (Score:2)
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I agree it should be 100/100, but its a legacy of DEC, not ADSL.
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Minimum should be 100/100 Mbps these days,..
I'm curious: why "should"? Why not 50/50 or 200/200? What makes 100/100 special? And what makes you think there's a single minimum reasonable speed for everyone? That strikes me as similar to saying "a house should have at least 1,000 square feet per person."
For a lot of people (most, I argue), 100/100 is way, way more than they need. If I'm checking WeChat or watching Paramount+, I don't need anything close to 100/100.
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Because 100BASE-TX is the 100Mbps ethernet speed.
Throttling the network artificially don't make sense. Coax nets are becoming obsolete as well. If you have a coax net then you can actually snoop on some of the traffic your neighbors gets too, even though it's less common now with https not all traffic is encrypted.
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Because 100BASE-TX is the 100Mbps ethernet speed.
I haven't used wired Ethernet in my home since I can't remember when. Everything is Wifi of some flavor. Why isn't that rate the rate you choose? Similarly, I can't remember the last time I saw a 10/100 Ethernet board. Everything seems to be 10/100/1000 these days. Why not gigabit up and down?
I find your argument unpersuasive.
In a fit of nerdiness, I looked up all the Ethernet standards I've used. The oldest was 5 Mbps "ThickLAN" using what I vaguely remember as about 1 cm cables. 10 Mbps "ThinLAN" using ~5
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Re:Depends (Score:4, Insightful)
standard itself used for the highest speed copper connections is inherently asymmetric because it operates in half-duplex
It is Not "inherently" asymmetric. The spec with mid-split provides 500 Megabits upstream bandwidth, and most HFC networks use mid-split -- noone is forcing providers to set the service as assymmetric; They make it asymmetric for cost reasons. The 500 Megabit upstream is shared by all customers on the node, and HFC providers don't want to spend the extra cost on more hardware to divide the nodes and have fewer customers per node (Extra network equipment has expensive hardware and software licensing costs).
In fact some providers are rolling out high-split and service with Symmetric speeds, but it's a network reconfiguration that doesn't happen overnight.
Providers choose to implement asymmetric capacity to minimize infrastructure costs (stack as many customers as possible on each node) while continuing to utilize much of the copper bandwidth for video services -- for the most popular applications such as web browsing; higher download speeds are more noticeable than upload speeds - 3 megabit is more than enough for surfing, and even gaming.. Not until people start using peer-to-peer protocols or videoconferencing, does upload become a bottleneck
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It is Not "inherently" asymmetric. The spec with mid-split provides 500 Megabits upstream bandwidth
Yes it is "inherently" asymmetric. The spec with mid-split provides 540Mbps upstream, and 9Gbps downstream, you left out that second part. Just because you can find a faster upstream product doesn't mean it isn't still inherently asymmetric.
The DOCSIS standard even with the most beneficial frequency split to upstream dedicates more of the available bandwidth to download capacity.
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Pretty much that - for anyone living in an area with optical fiber/Cat 5+ feed to the wall outlet there's no need to run any split speed. Just about every network device on the market today is capable of at least 100Mbps.
For areas with ADSL or other solutions like coaxial cable - well, obsolete stuff could be fun for some, but the reliability is so/so.
No worries (Score:2)
Per https://www.xfinity.com/networ... [xfinity.com]
to get 20Mbits up, have to pay for 600Mbits down anyway.
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...but just for daily activities, is probably good enough.
Spoken almost as if you're not a regulator intent on strong arming companies and buying votes through subsidies.
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...Anything short of 100 percent is just not good enough.
Proof by demonstration she's incorrect. My mother-in-law has much lower than that and is happy as a clam. Ditto my dad. For that matter, I'm on Zoom all day and would also probably be fine with 25/3.
I realize she's a politician spouting talking points so I assume she's duplicitous. I'd love to see some supporting documentation: how many people buy 10/1 versus 25/3 versus 100/20, what their actual usage is, and some correlation with their lifestyles. Someone downloading game ISOs all day is one class, someo
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I don't think "everyone needs 100 Mbps" for download speeds, by any means. But the providers have made it clear to customers for many years that they can provide speeds of at least 100 Mbps on the download side with little problem. Cable providers like Comcast and Spectrum were bumping this speed up by 100 Mbps at a time, free of charge, for existing subscribers, there for a while. (I remember paying for a 300 Mbps plans and then them announcing it would be 400 Mbps at no extra cost.)
The real bottleneck has
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But the providers have made it clear to customers for many years that they can provide speeds of at least 100 Mbps on the download side with little problem.
This isn't as much the case in rural areas. That is, it's entirely doable. It's just not economically viable in a lot of cases. Grant money is what makes it happen. Anyone that relies upon some for of DSL is just not going to attain those speeds at any sort of distance. It takes time and money to upgrade to fiber, and it also takes a customer base willing to adopt it. And to be clear, at least here, there are lot of customers that would rather hold on to their slower copper lines.
The real bottleneck has typically been the upload side, and 3 Mbps is too little, these days.
That is absolutely correct,
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I don't think "everyone needs 100 Mbps" for download speeds, by any means. But the providers have made it clear to customers for many years that they can provide speeds of at least 100 Mbps on the download side with little problem...The real bottleneck has typically been the upload side, and 3 Mbps is too little, these days.
Quite reasonable. If I were AT&T/Verizon/Comcast or whoever, I'd definitely be laying cable on the assumption I'd want to be able to support higher bit rates in the future. But I also have to believe at some point, future-proofing the network isn't cost effective. I suspect you're also right, 3 Mbps upload isn't good enough if two people are on a Zoom meeting or if you want to play a multiplayer game. Thing is, I suspect lots of people don't do those things. That's what I'd want to hear from the chairwo
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I'd agree with you, except I see so many issues that arise with that 3mb upload limit/cap. Especially in the case of a business, you run into the situation where it's "good enough" for 90% of what they do in a day. But they get clobbered when they've got a large document or video or CAD drawing they need to get emailed out or uploaded to a DropBox folder or what-not. (That upload bandwidth still needs to be sufficient to handle the checksums and smaller bits of data that need to keep going out in a timely m
Define away (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Federal Communications Commission proposes a new broadband standard of 100Mbps downloads and 20Mbps uploads, replacing the 2015's 25Mbps/3Mbps metric"
They can define/redefine it however they like. But I regularly observe browsing and 1080P video streaming in less than 10Mb/s and it is fine. So let's not pretend that anything less than 100Mbs is somehow unusable. It just isn't true, even with multiple typical users.
>"says the FCC must "take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market."
Oh now that is a totally DIFFERENT topic. That has to do with offerings and pricing, not speed. Where I live there is *ZERO* competition. The cable company is all there is, and you can get multi Gbs if you want. But if you don't like their pricing or service or selection, well too bad. They just upped my bill AGAIN and updated the speed AGAIN. I don't NEED 500Mb/s, but I am going to pay MORE than I did before, because I have no choice... there is no lesser plan now. Give me the option to pay half as much and get 250Mb/s (half the bandwidth, which is what I had) and I would jump on it immediately.
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Heck, give me a quarter of my 200 mbps at 80% of the price and I'd take it. Not happening though.
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perhaps they confuse speed with latency
or all the extra hops a page invokes these days
or the extra layers of bullshit that page demands the browser render (on lowspec machines)
or the external-domain bullshit the pages insist on
https://motherfuckingwebsite.c... [motherfuckingwebsite.com]
the noise at the start of this post will not be improved by upping the "when saturated" raw thoroughput speed, of which 25mbps is actually crazy fast for non-video (and would be plenty for glorious 1080p if it wasn't for bloat and overhead)
the spots wh
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Oh now that is a totally DIFFERENT topic.
Yep, and it's one of the most important ones, right up there with speed. Invalidate restrictions on municipal Internet, and much of the availability issue evaporates overnight.
Re:Define away (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I live there is *ZERO* competition
Here's a story. I used to live in a suburb of Nashville Tennessee, pretty big town but not near a quarter million people. Was zoned in a Comcast monopoly area, best they could do for me was 300Mbps for $120/mo and the lowest I could go was 100Mbps for $90/mo (thanks Comcast), whereas the person. Literally right across the street from me who was AT&T + Comcast, could get their 1Gbps for $99/mo.
About four years ago I moved into the middle of nowhere, BUT, they have their own coop teleco. They offered 1Gbps fiber to the house for $70/mo and Comcast is struggling to crack into the area with their $45/mo 300Mbps offer they keep shoving into my mailbox here.
The problem is ISPs and the various monopolies they have. Having moved out to an area where actual competition happens, yeah, what's holding everyone back is fucking Comcast, TWC/Spectrum, AT&T, and Verizon. There's no doubt in my mind at this point these are a massive amount of the problem with American Internet. If the FCC would grow some balls and break these companies into thousands of companies, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
The fact that my ISP today has about 11k customers (as the entire county has maybe about 30k people in it and that's being pretty generous) and is wildly profitable at selling $70/mo fiber gigabit really indicates that whatever the fuck is going on at like Comcast, has to be at least 300 employees shoveling cash into an inferno as fast as they possibility can, that or the CEO is just madly wealthy and gives every other employee the middle finger. We don't have a free market system in Internet, it's fucking monopolies and a few community telcos. And in every instance, when it's a coop or community telco, they're running fucking circles around anything the big ISPs could dream up in their most fevered dreams. And the fast that we've given these bastards billions of dollars to "build internet". These fuckers shouldn't walking free, they should be in a Federal Pound Me in the Ass Prison [youtube.com].
Re:Define away (Score:5, Informative)
Where I live there is *ZERO* competition
Here's a story
I came to tell a similar story, but from my country. We had a similar situation years ago, where like 3 or 4 big telcos dominated the market. In the day places like Europe, South Korea and some American areas were long enjoying blazing fast FTTH, we had monopolized, slow, unstable and overpriced ADSL, if we're lucky.
And we did learn that in SK the secret for such high quality internet was competition. In big cities there were dozens of internet companies.
And by some sort of miracle, our politicians, in a strike of good sense never seen before in our land, decided to decrease red tape in the land internet business, to improve competition.
Soon, many smol guys fiber companies appeared, offering triple the speed, single digit ping, nice stability and benefits like included streaming subscriptions, for half, even one third the price the Big Telco were extorting us.
TLDR: in my small and rural city of a (barely) developing country, where there was only 1 crappy expensive option, now we have like 5 good options for affordable prices, thanks to less regulation.
Oh and all the Big Telcos are now in financial trouble, some already broke and were absorbed by some of the others.
For me all of them deserve to crash and burn, good riddance to them.
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Where I live, the same thing happened through increased regulation. Physical net owners were forced to allow competitors to use their net to sell connection, and now I have 8 offers of gigabit at very competitive prices on my wire coming into my home, and too many lower speed options at excellent value to count. Before there was no regulation, and companies would hog their wire and have high prices and low service, but the gov't wanted everyone to have good Internet so increased regulation.
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That's interesting, we're pretty far out in the middle of no where as well; when the silly covid hysteria hit the wife and I both started working remotely full time.
So we signed up for viasat. 600ms latency as a best case, 100GB monthly cap, and it was $165/month
Then we tried cellular hotspots, $120 a month, low latency, but again, stupidly low monthly cap.
Then finally, FINALLY we got starlink, it started out at $90 month, but no cap, 30ms avg latency, with north of 100mbit service.
But starlink's latency wa
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Nearest town/grocery store is about 20 miles out; which okay, okay it's not rural Alaska, accessible solely by bush plane or anything too nutty, but pretty far out in the woods all the same. Cellular was an option because we have LOS to the towers which are about 35 miles away, but at a substantially lower elevation.
As far as the fiber, I'm really not sure how our ISP is able to offer service out here for profit, but here we are (it's a small, regional ISP, so maybe that's a factor?). There's a small coun
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But I regularly observe browsing and 1080P video streaming in less than 10Mb/s and it is fine.
I'm happy you use the internet like it's 2005. I regularly observe and browse sites that load entire applications into the browser, and I do so while teleconferencing with multiple 1080p feeds (something that became perfectly normal during COVID as even random school kids had to monopolise that bandwidth for the the entire school day).
I hope you didn't pre-order Starfield. At 10mbps the pre-order early play bonus may expire before you even download the 125GB install files.
It's not 2005 anymore. Watching a 1
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What you say is perfectly valid. But note I was talking about "typical" or "average" people. You aren't that :) Most on Slashdot aren't.
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Given how shitty the Quality of Service is, you probably need a 100 Mbps connection in order to actually achieve 10!
This, really, is what I would like the FCC to be stricter about. All the ISPs like to advertise the "up to ### Mbps" metri
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Agreed. The quality of the service matters just as much (if not more) than the claimed speed metrics.
I'd be happy with 25/3 if it were free... (Score:2)
...or very low cost. I was on a TWC/Spectrum "everyday low price" plan when it was 3/1. They bumped their speeds, and I screwed myself out of getting a grandfathered plan because I went to one of their faster speed plans. Now, the grandfathered ELP plans are like $15-20 per month (I think), and 30/3 or something.
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...or very low cost.
I'd be happy if T-bone steaks were free or low cost too. I'm not going to get it.
But this is the crux of the issue: who gets to decide what products are offered at what prices? Chairwoman Rosenworcel seems to be saying she knows you'd prefer 100/20 at some higher price to 25/3 (or even 10/1) at a much lower price. I have no idea where she gets this confidence. I'm not even that confident I want coffee over tea this morning.
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That pricing is a bit high for what it is. I'm currently at $70/month for a grandfathered AT&T fiber plan which includes Max. I will lose Max if I switch to a different plan.
Satellite constellation (Score:2)
The only way to make sure everyone in the US has broadband is with a satellite mega-constellation, as envisioned by WorldVu/OneWeb back in 2012 and then blatantly stolen (reference: https://archive.ph/20140903223... [archive.ph] ) by and implemented by SpaceX as Starlink.
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Might be ok for downloading traffic, but the competition for RF bandwidth could make performance worse than a noisy dialup line in the middle of a virgin forest.
And upload speeds? Ha Ha Ha!
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Got any proof of SpaceX seriously "looking into space-based broadband" in 2004? When Blue Origin works on reusable rockets you don't start saying they were looking into it before SpaceX (we know they were, they had patents on sea landing before SpaceX.) It's pretty obvious that SpaceX really started getting serious about it after they spoke to WorldVu.
The big telcos are dragging their feet because $$$ (Score:2)
This is going to require ... (Score:2)
2 biggest barriers (Score:3)
Profitability and incumbent carriers are the biggest barriers. When individual towns tried to deal with incumbent indifference their efforts were sued into oblivion. Small companies can't do anything without the big kids taking them out at the knees with either their army of lawyers or just buying them out and shutting them down.
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Numbers don't tell the whole picture...
Many are only operating in specific areas, or only provide service to business customers etc. Some don't provide last mile services at all, and are just wholesale/datacentre transit. There is also a lot of overlap, some people are lucky enough to be in areas served by many providers, while a much larger number of people are stuck in places with only one choice.
bufferbloat (Score:3)
Why 100mbps needs to be the standard (Score:2)
25 is good enough IF they could guarantee it. But we know they won't. We know that when they say 25 you'd probably actually provide 10 or less. That's why the standard needs to be 100 so they'll provide 25 consistently.
Wifi's the limiting factor (Score:2)
Even if you're using one of the more recent wifi standards, your typical device is limited to a tiny fraction of your actual home internet speed.
Ethernet FTW.
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Even if you're using one of the more recent wifi standards, your typical device is limited to a tiny fraction of your actual home internet speed.
I remember getting 50mbps on wi-fi G back in the early 2000s. Nowadays I regularly get 200+ mbps with wi-fi AC on the cheap-ish APs I bought a few years ago. Wi-fi has been capable of fully delivering the sorts of speeds discussed in this article for a long, long time.
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You *can* get those speeds, in good conditions...
Back when you were using G in the early 2000s, there were probably not many other wifi users nearby. When i first deployed wifi at home, my network was the only one visible, now i can see 20+ just from my laptop and many more with a high gain antenna.
A lot of people use poor quality equipment, poor placement of devices, obstacles like walls and large furniture items, interference from neighboring users and other devices etc. A lot of people also clog the avai
25 Mbps down is fine, 3 Mbps up isn't (Score:2)
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In my village in Spain I can only choose between 400, 600, 800 and 1000 symmetric Mbps. 25 or 100 Mbps doesn't exist since at least a decade.
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The minimum available in my village is 4000 Mbps. I though I made it clear. My local provider doesn't offer any slower plans. I guess you could try hard to find some other, slower plan from some weird provider but it would probably cost you more.
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400 Mbps of course.
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Does Spain have a minimum internet speed that the government is working toward being available everywhere? Or is it "I've got mine, who cares about your village being left behind"? Hint: What you have isn't av
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Well, you're right. I got your point now. For accessing government pages, online banking or checking bus schedule 30 Mbps is enough. Only people that use internet for entertainment need more.
This could stir things up (Score:3)
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I believe 25/3 is the current limit of DSL technology. Forcing a higher standard suddenly puts AT&T uVerse, for instance, in trouble, maybe. I'd expect some enthusiastic lobbying.
As others have reported, in other countries it's been significantly faster symmetrical for a long time. And I strongly suspect that the necessity of offering asymmetric provisioning is not a technical issue and hasn't been for some time.
I happen to live in a part of the US with a relatively new fiber infrastructure, and gig symmetric has been available for a while. And it's cheap.
I think what we're really saying here is that a huge segment of the US is held prisoner by the owners of a century old copper pair infrastructure. And they're not budgin'.
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Uverse is VDSL2, and can go up to about 50/6, maybe a little better with perfect copper. I'm getting 35/6, and that's on the third pair that the guy tried. (I'm about 4 blocks to the box.) It is also now a legacy service, but the so-called "AT&T Fiber" only offers me 100mbit here. I doubt they could do even that much with this crap copper, and I've seen no signs of digging.
But it doesn't really matter, since Google Fiber has been cutting into all the streets in my neighborhood here the past few weeks.
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I have to wonder, though, if Google Fiber will be allowed to complete their infrastructure and actually offer it to sale to individuals. Or if AT&T will grease some hands and get it shut down.
Be glad you're not on Windstream/Kinetic (Score:2)
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I have Windstream, and I find them to be pretty darned good. Up until about 2015, I had Windstream DSL at 3Mb. Spectrum is in my area and was faster when it worked, but it would go down every day for hours at a time. The Windstream was at least stable at 3Mbit. Around 2015 Spectrum fixed their infrastructure and became stable, so I switched. About three years ago I discovered that Windstream had run fiber down my street. They offered me a 200Mbit symmetric connection for about $60 a month. I switche
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I've been on Windstream for years here in Houston county, GA (not exactly rural anymore). First DSL, started at 50, they upgraded the DSLAM, offered 100, that worked a treat. Another DSLAM upgrade and for a couple of years, I was on the "up to 200" plan, got ~180 down, and they just let 'er eat on upstream, routinely got 60-70 up. Rare to have any outage.
In March this year, they brought fiber through our neighborhood. I'm now on 1gig/1gig fiber, $70/month. This week, Windstream began offering 8gig symm
Whoa there, something stuck in the revolving door? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good job setting impossible goals, dumbass. (Score:2)
And 100% is not possible, so enjoy making the perfect the enemy of the good and setting everyone up for failure. Big talk from a space-wasting bureaucrat might impress some weak-minded journalists, but it's just more hot air from a pompous fool.
Legal justification for speed asymmetry? (Score:2)
This all comes from 1996 telecommunications act (47 USC 1302) where the term "Advanced telecommunications capability" is defined.
"The term "advanced telecommunications capability" is defined, without regard to any transmission media or technology, as high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology."
Nowhere in the definition is there ANY preference expressed for dire
Who had that? (Score:2)
Free stuff! (Score:2)
Free stuff for everyone! Paid for by YOU.
Some areas have almost no options (Score:2)
Our area only has ATT DSL. 5MBs down and 1MB up on a good day. They have no plans to expand or improve service and refuse to add new customers while disconnecting some old customers. Our local ISP has tried for years to install fiber, but has run into stiff opposition from the telecom monopolies. Their attitude seems to be ... We won't provide service and will use every dirty trick in the book to prevent others from providing service
We need laws that allow local ISPs to install fiber without interference. A
My lakehouse is in one of these rural areas (Score:2)
For the last year I have struggled mightily to get any kind of broadband internet there. I tried wired solutions, wireless point to point, wireless from AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. I looked into satellite (mainly Hughes, Starlink isn't available yet). It all sucked. Bad latency. Unreliable connections. Several providers blanketed the area in advertising but then determined they couldn't serve my address. Even the stuff that reliably "worked" ran at around 10mbs max.
Finally I found a company with
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have you seen what the average person does with internet access?
Clearly, you don't have multiple people streaming video simultaneously in your house.
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Posted during my lunch break working from home with remote desktop and Teams.
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teams needs 0.5Mbps for HD video and chat with a single person, for a HD group (540p videos on a 1080p screen) you need at most 2Mbps.
So at most, do you actually use v
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Yes, colleagues and clients want to video conference and share their screen, while logged into a work desktop from home.
Not sure on how much bandwidth is used but being some sort of Electron web-based, IIRC; it needs a somewhat recent machine to drive all that video and Javascript. I am running a 6th Gen core i5 after my attempts to use an old Core 2 Duo laptop as a thin client during COVID lockdown had it stuttering.
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What's more important is the latency. Although the latency will generally increase quite significantly if you're saturating the link.
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Clearly, you don't have multiple people streaming video simultaneously in your house.
Or downloading games on multiple consoles, or doing operating system updates on multiple computers, or tried to run a small business on your own pipe, etc. I have a symmetrical gigabit, and I'm damned thankful for it. I could EASILY see that eaten up by even a modestly successful business.
Where I work, we have a 10gb symmetrical fiber connection, and we STILL have to use it wisely. There is absolutely no such thing as too much bandwidth. The whole thought is absurdly laughable.
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Using a water analogy, what good does it do to have a 10" supply to your house if all the pipes in your home are 3/4"? If you open every tap and faucet in your house and can only consume 300 gallons per minute, why have a pipe that can supply 10,000 gpm? (10" x 150psi)
At some point it becomes marketing. Comcast/Xfinity offers 5GB download and 25MB upload, but most residential households don't have Cat6 wires and can't use all 5GB anyway. If your internal network is the limiting factor, a higher max spe
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Yes most users would be better off if they reallocated some of those downstream channels to provide better upstream. Uploading is far more common than it used to be, video streams, content uploaded to social media etc. But they don't because the headline download rate is a big part of their marketing strategy.
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Using a water analogy, what good does it do to have a 10" supply to your house if all the pipes in your home are 3/4"?
If I subscribe to a 10" supply, I'm going to upgrade my house to 10" pipes. This isn't complicated or mysterious. It's really, really simple.
It's the same thing that happened when I went from a 100mb network to a gigibit network: I upgraded the wires in my house from cat3 to cat 5e, and bought gigabit equipment.
Re:disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
>"Clearly, you don't have multiple people streaming video simultaneously in your house."
I can't speak for him/her or you, but one can stream 1080P quite easily and well at 5Mbs. 5 users would be "only" 25Mbs, which is their previous definition of broadband. It doesn't *NEED* a base low plan to be defined at 100Mbs "because of video". I manage a large guest network (hundreds of users) with all kinds of connected devices, including "smart" TV's. Video accounts for probably around 85 to 90% of ALL typical bandwidth. And I monitor everything from Netflix to Youtube to Hulu to whatever.
And 1080P resolution is way excessive most of the time, anyway. The average user probably can't tell ANY difference between 1080P and 720P video on some 5 to 6" phone screen or typical tablet. I can almost guarantee 98+% of typical random people would not be able to tell any difference between 4K and upscaled 1080P on even an 75" screen at the typical viewing distance of 10 feet. Even those who can wouldn't notice unless you pointed it out (or started flipping between the two). Probably 75+% can't tell or don't care in the same setup between native 4K and upscaled 1080P.
Are there people that need more? Sure. Downloading huge game data, data backups, or very intense remote use with also doing other stuff might not fit with 25Mbs. But that is far from typical. And I would think the definitions would be based on typical/average, not edge cases. I am not anti-speed, just trying to put a cap on there being some kind of speed crisis, when the real crisis is total lack of availability in some areas and total lack of competition in others that is causing poor service quality and bad pricing. I know people who would kill for reliable and affordable 25Mbps with good service.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Probably 75+% can't tell or don't care in the same setup between native 4K and upscaled 1080P."
Typos, that was meant to be:
"Probably 75+% can't tell or don't care in the same setup between native 1080P and upscaled 720P."
Re: (Score:2)
For the hip up-and-comers in this world the use of 1080p is SO YESTERDAY.
Video gotta be streamed at 4K or higher or else your Internet service just plain sux and ought to be changed for something better.
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Yep, they are working on specs, not reality. Same people who "have" to have X horsepower in a car with no concept as to the torque curve, weight of the vehicle, or anything else. Just that number. Gotta have it.
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Maybe we should go to 240, it was good enough for VHS so it should be good enough for up and comers today. Right?
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On my 1080p TV I don't see a bit of difference. One my 1080p monitor, I don't see any difference either.
(Interestingly, I checked to see how many US households have 4K TVs and I was surprised it has risen to 47%. Perhaps I need to upgrade my TV soon.)
To support your point though, I can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p so your point might be correct for those with 4K displays.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Streaming entertainment is hardly a critical need requiring government intervention. If you can afford a streaming service, you can afford the bandwidth it needs. 25 Mbps is way more than enough for any reasonable "need", anything more is a "want." Especially if people stop sending fucking HTML emails.
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Streaming entertainment is hardly a critical need requiring government intervention. If you can afford a streaming service, you can afford the bandwidth it needs.
First, everyone is entitled to more in life than the bare essentials. That doesn't mean we should subsidize everything, but setting a minimum standard that would allow for it is absolutely reasonable. Second, there is absolutely nothing saying those streamed videos aren't educational, or work related. Third, there is nothing saying they have to be from a paid streaming service. Youtube exists, as do a number of free streaming services.
25 Mbps is way more than enough for any reasonable "need", anything more is a "want."
Right now. The beauty about the government is that it takes time to imple
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It sure seems that way, but that's bullshit.
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That's The Point (Score:2)
Clearly, you don't have multiple people streaming video simultaneously in your house.
No, but not everybody does, and that's the point. For some people, 25Mbs is fine. For some, 5Mbs is fine. For some, 100Mbs is the bare minimum.
So how do you define the "Minimum" speed for broadband internet access? I don't think you can. Different people have different needs.
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That's right. I don't lease out my spare bedrooms or unused square footage to the illegal immigrants that cross US borders claiming "Joe Biden Invited Us !"
To make use of that much bandwidth, those illegal immigrants would have to be from India.
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25mbps is an insane amount of speed
Yeah. But they want you to stream all those video ads that Google and others need to support their business model. Fine. Then let Google pay for the high bandwidth service and I'll stop blocking their ads.
That's how broadcast TV works. Advertisers pay for the networks and transmitting towers. I don't start paying until it reaches the rabbit ears.