The FCC Is Preparing To Weaken the Definition of Broadband (dslreports.com) 217
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: Under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, the FCC is required to consistently measure whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans uniformly and "in a reasonable and timely fashion." If the FCC finds that broadband isn't being deployed quickly enough to the public, the agency is required by law to "take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market." Unfortunately whenever the FCC is stocked by revolving door regulators all-too-focused on pleasing the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast -- this dedication to expanding coverage and competition often tends to waver.
What's more, regulators beholden to regional duopolies often take things one-step further -- by trying to manipulate data to suggest that broadband is faster, cheaper, and more evenly deployed than it actually is. We saw this under former FCC boss Michael Powell (now the top lobbyist for the cable industry), and more recently when the industry cried incessantly when the base definition of broadband was bumped to 25 Mbps downstream, 4 Mbps upstream. We're about to see this effort take shape once again as the FCC prepares to vote in February for a new proposal that would dramatically weaken the definition of broadband. How? Under this new proposal, any area able to obtain wireless speeds of at least 10 Mbps down, 1 Mbps would be deemed good enough for American consumers, pre-empting any need to prod industry to speed up or expand broadband coverage.
What's more, regulators beholden to regional duopolies often take things one-step further -- by trying to manipulate data to suggest that broadband is faster, cheaper, and more evenly deployed than it actually is. We saw this under former FCC boss Michael Powell (now the top lobbyist for the cable industry), and more recently when the industry cried incessantly when the base definition of broadband was bumped to 25 Mbps downstream, 4 Mbps upstream. We're about to see this effort take shape once again as the FCC prepares to vote in February for a new proposal that would dramatically weaken the definition of broadband. How? Under this new proposal, any area able to obtain wireless speeds of at least 10 Mbps down, 1 Mbps would be deemed good enough for American consumers, pre-empting any need to prod industry to speed up or expand broadband coverage.
Bastardizing terminology (Score:2)
So it no longer means "Frequency-Division Multiplexing"?
It also blows my mind how many people in the field don't know the difference between broadband and baseband.
Re:Bastardizing terminology (Score:4, Informative)
Broadband has never had anything to do with FDM specifically. Or rather, there have always been definitions of the term that didn't have anything to do with FDM.
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You would be wrong. Frequency division multiplexing (analog signals) was referred to as broadband going back several decades. Many of the technologies used today that are referred to as broadband are actually baseband, or time division multiplexing (digital signals).
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That was the definition in the Microsoft MCSE prep books, but I never found the definition used much anywhere else. I also learned a lot of defunct stuff in those books - so I always kind of wondered if I was crazy with my "broadband" definition. And, not knowing anything about how ADSL works under the covers, it may as well be broadband. So might 3G for all I know!
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That was the definition in almost every industry textbook. Long before it was degraded to broadband = fast Internet connection.
First step in a five-step plan? (Score:5, Interesting)
Repealing Net Neutrality may be the first step in a five-step plan from cable companies to combat their competition and cord-cutters:
Thoughts?
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From this Reddit post:
Now that Net Neutrality has been killed, my ISP won't allow me to go to Reddit unless I upgrade my service to the Internet Unlimited(TM) pack. :-(
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Makes sense. However, you forgot to point out that you can have Netflix with your favorite telco for some extra and of course the contract is fix for 48 month. Also if you switch to another provider, your Netflix account will go too as it is included.
Re:First step in a five-step plan? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Data Caps and Ant-Net Neutrality have always been about the ISPs protecting their TV revenue by leveraging their broadband monopolies.
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Step 1: Repeal Net Neutrality, then offer new, unlimited data plans for mobile/home Internet. Convince people to buy into these "forever unlimited" data plans.
Wow, what a bunch of evil bastards. Good thing smart people like these brave Redditors won't be fooled and will obstinately stick with their tried and true capped plans.
Step 2: Get all data usage (mobile and home) classified under a single umbrella.
All these propositions seem to me to be the byproduct of a few too many fertile imaginations with a bit too much time on their hands, but this one particularly takes the cake. Are they suggesting the United States would essentially co-opt all ISPs and telecom companies and force them to do business in such a restricted way? Has it crossed
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Thoughts?
It depends on having "more FCC intervention". In fact, the reason for the Net Neutrality repeal, as is for most Trump era policy changes, is "Reducing regulations and less intervention". Thus your imagined doomsday scenario is highly flawed. If your plan involves "more governement", it's probably fantasy and fiction for this administration.
If you wanted it to be a credible outcome, you needed to stick with "Corporate takeover", while steering clear of any blatant Sherman act violations (you guys remember
yay! (Score:2)
Regulatory Capture (Score:2)
C'mon, drop the charade (Score:2)
Can we finally disband the FCC and let the ISPs themselves take over their agenda? It's not like anyone really still believes that they're not a 100% subsidiary by now anyway.
10MBps is just fine (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure I'll be flamed here for this, but I always thought the 25Mbps definition was too high as a "minimum definition." An HD NetFlix stream is 5Mbps. 10Mbps allows two simultaneous HD streams, or one HD stream plus plenty of headroom for other normal activities. I would rather that the FCC define it to be 10Mbps, but actually check that this bandwidth is available consistently during peak usage. The reason to make it as high as 25Mbps is because the telcos rarely actually deliver their promised speeds.
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"10Mbps allows two simultaneous HD streams, or one HD stream plus plenty of headroom for other normal activities"
And how often do you think you'll actually get 10Mbps, especially as the FCC continues to weaken itself for the benefit of ISPs?
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50% of my comment addresses this. Read the whole thing before responding.
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"10Mbps allows two simultaneous HD streams, or one HD stream plus plenty of headroom for other normal activities"
And how often do you think you'll actually get 10Mbps, especially as the FCC continues to weaken itself for the benefit of ISPs?
I think that was the point the GP was making. Between "up to 25mbits/sec down" that never, ever is, and "10Mbits/sec down, a minimum of 98% uptime, with no more than 10% oversubscription", and have it enforced, the latter would be preferable.
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If you're a single-person household, Netflix-watching couch potato, then 10Mb is probably fine for you. If you live in a family household, or if you have anything even remotely resembling an entrepreneurial spirit, 10mb down doesn't do much. And 1mb up?! That's a bad joke with a really shitty punchline.
25mb down and 4mb up is just (barely) enough to satisfy fundamentally basic needs for someone with more drive than just an old, fat cat. And even that is chuckle-worthy. 100mb symmetrical at about $50/mo
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100mb symmetrical at about $50/month should be a minimum mandated starting point to drive innovation.
Regulating the price is about the surest way to prevent any new entrants from entering the market.
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I agree with your numbers. Just be aware that are talking about the minimum definition of the word broadband. A household with multiple people streaming video + an entrepreneur isn't really the definition of minimum.
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I'm sure I'll be flamed here for this, but I always thought the 25Mbps definition was too high as a "minimum definition." An HD NetFlix stream is 5Mbps. 10Mbps allows two simultaneous HD streams, or one HD stream plus plenty of headroom for other normal activities. I would rather that the FCC define it to be 10Mbps, but actually check that this bandwidth is available consistently during peak usage. The reason to make it as high as 25Mbps is because the telcos rarely actually deliver their promised speeds.
I agree, except maybe bumping the upload to 2-3 for video calls. Otherwise, you're right. that's about all you need to get 1-2 decent video streams. If you have a family, then you need either a family plan or to learn to manage bandwidth as a resource.
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After reading replies, I have another proposal: instead of defining it to be some arbitrary number like "25mbps" or "10mbps" perhaps they should define it in a market-driven way. For example, define it as 1 video stream + 1 person shopping on the web. Similar to how things like the CPI or cost-of-living is determined.
Please be aware that we are talking about the minimum definition of the word "broadband" here. The idea is to get people who have no internet onto some minimal viable internet. But based on
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I'm not sure it makes sense to use old habits as a reference point. Netflix 4k needs around 20Mbps, so by that metric 50Mbps would be about right. (While 4k is not useful on most tvs, it's nice on a big computer monitor from 2 feet away.)
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I'm not sure it makes sense to use old habits as a reference point.
You got right down to the crux of the problem. What are we trying to define, and how should we define it? We are trying to define "minimum" here for the purpose of providing taxpayer subsidies to telcos.
We don't want to tie the definition of basic minimum-level "broadband" to the amount of bandwidth required for a premium entertainment system. The household that bought a 4K monitor can afford to get more than the basic service. This is about defining what the minimum level is, so that the FCC can determ
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Yes that is the most important question, though I side stepped it. I really don't know the penalties and rewards for the ISPs not doing enough "broadband".
I would assume anyone who could upgrade would be considered co
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I too assume the ISPs want a lower minimum. I'm just agree that the lower minimum is appropriate. As for the price thing, the FCC sets a price for telephone service. I dunno how broadband internet is handled. Logically, if the government is talking about subsidizing then price fixing usually goes along with that.
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I always thought the 25Mbps definition was too high as a "minimum definition."
It's too high as the definition of "minimum required for normal Internet use". It's definitely not too high as a definition of "fast Internet".
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Agreed! Part of the problem is that the FCC is trying to define "broadband" which is a technical term that is already well defined. It has to do with what frequencies are used to transmit. Unfortunately, as you point out, the term has come to mean "fast internet" which is constantly changing and rather ambiguous.
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It has become a marketing term. Much like "organic."
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Agreed. Those of us who live alone and have no interest in 4K video certainly have no use for more than 10Mbps. I've happily downgraded to 6Mbps to save money, and I can't imagine what I could want faster for. And I spend most of my day working online. When discussing broadband as a necessary utility for the modern world, there's no sense in defining broadband as a speed that most people can't even think of a way to use. If you've got 5 kids all watching videos at once... they can suffer 360p for a bit, gas
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there's no sense in defining broadband as a speed that most people can't even think of a way to use
That sarcasm only makes sense to someone who doesn't understand what we are discussing. The definition of broadband is not the level at which "most people can't even think of a way to use" it. The definition determines the level at which the FCC will start to funnel taxpayer money to telecom companies so they can upgrade their service. We don't need to divert those subsidies to people who have 5 kids and complain that their video quality isn't good enough. We should rather subsidize internet for rural f
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Listen closely to the ads by the big internet providers. "Speeds up to NNN Mbps". Great use of weasel words that most consumers will probably not catch.
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Its high until you visit another country - even in the most rural parts of Scotland 10 years ago 30 megabits was minimum speed you could buy for a cable provider.
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Because nobody works from home, nobody ever uploads anything to the Internet, and everyone lives alone and has the connection all to themselves.
If you work from home, that's a business expense. Who cares whether it's called "broadband" or not, your employer needs to pay what is required for you to get the job done.
Who decides what's "fast"? (Score:2)
Seriously, who decides how fast is fast? If you want uninterrupted 8K Netflix movies, well, perhaps you should pay more for that because plenty of people are happy with 4K and most people only own an HD TV. Pay more for that level of service. A library probably doesn't need to stream video nor does a Starbucks. Of course, the ISPs aren't too honest about their tier performances. The basic service usually doesn't give you enough data per month to allow for nightly streaming movies. They know this too b
And if you read everything you find it is false. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is almost as bad as all those people claiming that with Title 2 now gone they have been having issues with ISP blocking sites and throttling access. When in fact Title 2 rules are still in effect.
Don't get rid of your old modems (Score:2)
Those and a land line may be what passes for "broadband" once Idjit Pai finishes dismantling everything the FCC has previously done.
The Heart of the Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
All this fuss over the FCC, FTC, and Net neutrality is stupid and unproductive.
What's holding back internet speed and greater access is local monopolies. Even if the FCC did, "take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market." It still wouldn't enable a city or small business from starting their own internet provider company and put up lines in neighborhoods.
Simply eliminate all local monopolies on internet access and you will see all manner of companies jumping into the fray.
BTW, these monopolies are created by local governments. So instead of whining about the Feds, call up City Hall and give them a ration of shit.
Re:The Heart of the Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply eliminate all local monopolies on internet access and you will see all manner of companies jumping into the fray.
Yes. These monopoly agreements must be declared illegal at the federal level, with an actual law which overrides state law. If we can't even manage that, we literally cannot fix this problem.
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I already have no competition (Score:3)
The problem is that the federal law would be even allowing LESS competition because reasons.
How could it allow less? I have precisely one reasonable ISP option to my house right now. (Comcast in my case) The only "competitor" is Frontier Communications which offers substantially slower DSL service or my other option is to go entirely wireless which would be problematic for various reasons.
What needs to happen is that a law needs to be passed that companies can deliver content or they can deliver the pipe but not both. And the pipe providers need to be regulated to a similar degree as the elect
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And the pipe providers need to be regulated to a similar degree as the electric companies to ensure fair and non-discriminatory access at rational prices even to rural areas.
You forgot about free ponies for everyone.
Broadband by whatever definition you choose is really cool to have, but in no way shape form or fashion approaches a basic need. Growing up in a tech-heavy bubble doubtless makes it hard to comprehend how much of society gets along just fine without it.
Internet service is a utility (Score:2)
And the pipe providers need to be regulated to a similar degree as the electric companies to ensure fair and non-discriminatory access at rational prices even to rural areas.
You forgot about free ponies for everyone.
Save your snark. We subsidize rural access to phone service because it is important and have for decades. We should do the same for internet access and I don't mean dial up.
Broadband by whatever definition you choose is really cool to have, but in no way shape form or fashion approaches a basic need.
To most people it is more of a need in today's world than phone service is and phone service is FAR more regulated. Internet service is a utility of national importance and should be regulated as such.
Growing up in a tech-heavy bubble doubtless makes it hard to comprehend how much of society gets along just fine without it.
Well since I'm old enough to pre-date the internet and FAR older than the web I think I have a better handle on what life is like witho
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At the rate web sites are increasing in size, you need a pretty big pipe to load pages. I was on dial-up until the other month, some pages would spend a half hour loading (26.4 connection, about 5 minutes per MB) before failing and even small sites like here would fail to totally load.
Now I have a 4G connection and some sites are still slow. It's like computer memory and how software expands to fill it up, web pages grow to fill up the average pipe.
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There is a solution to promoting competition which doesn't involve this [ixquick-proxy.com] problem, it was implemented in 1999 [techlawjournal.com], but it's only ever applied to DSL because in 2002 the FCC decided to classify other ISPs as "information services" rather than as "telecommunication services."
In other words, this is one more way in which
Re:The Heart of the Problem (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to look up the term 'natural monopoly'. Even in places where there is no legally enforced local monopoly, you almost always see a monopoly or, at best, a duopoly. Laying cable to houses is expensive. You typically only see a return on investment after 5-10 years. That's fine for a telecoms or cable monopoly, because they know that in 10 years they'll still be the default choice for you (or, at worst, they have a 50-50 chance of being your first choice, so if they install 100 lines they'll expect at least 50 customers). It's not a great business model for anyone else.
In the UK, the places where we have a duopoly exist because the government prevented our national telco monopoly from offering TV services, which allowed a bunch of regional monopoly cable companies to start up. We only saw two trying to compete in a handful of places, because it's very hard to compete with an incumbent and much cheaper to start a new company somewhere where there isn't competition. These local monopolies gradually merged and now we have precisely one cable company for the entire country.
The biggest improvement to competition for our ISPs came from two things. The first was splitting the telco monopoly into wholesale and retail arms, with a requirement that the wholesale arm offers other ISPs access to their products at the same rate that they offer them to their retail arm (this at least gives us the illusion of competition, though you really have lots of companies offering basically the same thing for basically the same price, with the price set by a third party).
The other thing was the legal enforcement of local loop unbundling, where third parties were allowed to install their own equipment to terminate the last mile connections at exchanges. This has allowed some companies to offer a competing service, run over the same last mile as the incumbent telco, but with their own back-haul and so on. It's fairly limited though, because it requires quite a large investment at the exchange and is only worth doing if you have a lot of customers wanting to switch in an area. It's completely unavailable in the rural areas with the worst service.
If you think you can make money as an ISP laying your own network, then you're very welcome to come to the UK and try it. The government won't get in your way, and may even pay you to connect up people in certain areas. You might find it difficult to get investors though, because aside from a few small companies in very dense areas (there's one FTTP company in the middle of London with a few thousand customers, which currently offers the fastest speeds of any UK ISP), everyone else who has tried has failed.
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The other thing was the legal enforcement of local loop unbundling, where third parties were allowed to install their own equipment to terminate the last mile connections at exchanges. This has allowed some companies to offer a competing service, run over the same last mile as the incumbent telco, but with their own back-haul and so on. It's fairly limited though, because it requires quite a large investment at the exchange and is only worth doing if you have a lot of customers wanting to switch in an area. It's completely unavailable in the rural areas with the worst service.
Pacific Bell (which was bought by SWB, which was bought by ATT) was infamous world-over for failing to service such connections. ATT is still shit about servicing even the lines resold for business use. It's actually cheaper to buy a connection from an ATT reseller than from ATT directly, but if you do that, expect extra downtime.
The same was true of mere residential DSL connections, of course.
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So your position is that you can't make money laying your own lines...like the company that did it previously.
Business is hard. Most fail.
But if you have the Government standing in the way keeping anyone from even trying, then what's the point?
Get rid of the monopolies and THEN you can talk about Business models, investments, etc.
Case in point...Power companies are researching sending signals over the power line. Regardless of where they are at, it's legally conceivable that they would be prevented from usi
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So your position is that you can't make money laying your own lines...like the company that did it previously.
Correct. A market like this has a huge first-mover advantage. Unless you have very deep pockets and investors that are willing to wait a very long time for a possible return, competing with an incumbent provider basically impossible. There are lots of markets where it's easy to make money as the first person to do something and almost impossible to make money as the second.
Get rid of the monopolies and THEN you can talk about Business models, investments, etc.
Did you miss the part where I'm talking about the UK, where we did that almost 30 years ago? In fact, take a look at pretty much any
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No, it actually doesn't matter how deep your pockets are or how dedicated your investors are. Two wire providers can't work except in d
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take a look at pretty much anywhere in Europe and you'll struggle to find a single country where high speeds have come as a result of deregulation. The countries with the highest speeds have them because of government intervention in the markets
That's not however true; see Romania for a very strong counter-example. According to a 2016 Akamai study (quoted here [wikipedia.org]) Romania has the highest internet speed in Europe (and Timisoara, a Romanian city, has the highest average download speed in the world, at 89.91 Mbit/s in 2013). This happens at very low prices - comparisons here [expatistan.com] show the internet price in Bucharest to be less than half of London, and about 5 times smaller than Buffalo, NY. Some older national averages put the price in Romania to 2 cents per [valme.io]
Natural Monopoly (Score:2)
So your position is that you can't make money laying your own lines...like the company that did it previously.
That's absolutely correct. The company that did it previously was a subsidized monopoly. Once the money is already spent to string one set of wires to a house there it considerably weakens the business case to string a second set of wires. The first competitor in has a nearly insurmountable cost advantage over any later competitors. It's one of the cases where more competition does not actually reduce prices.
But if you have the Government standing in the way keeping anyone from even trying, then what's the point?
The government can get out of the way entirely and it would still fail because the services we a
Re:The Heart of the Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
"You might want to look up the term 'natural monopoly'."
Finally something intelligent said about this. I get tired of reading comments by libertarians that don't understand anything about economics, especially macro economics. You can't get real competition in markets that are inherently natural monopolies. Regulation, or outright government takeover are the only alternatives.
The real problem for the US is that universal high speed broadband is starting to be a competitive advantage for other countries that are pushing high speed internet to all of its citizens. We have allowed corporate propaganda to obscure the fact that the US is falling behind in something that we created.
Let us take an example from history. Does anyone know anything about the Rural Electrification Act? It was a push by the US government to get good electricity to every person in the country. Before the act if you lived out side of a major city in a rural area you almost certainly didn't have electricity.
Getting electricity to everyone in the country actually greatly helped the US Economy in the long run, but no company would have done this on its own because it just wasn't profitable in the short run.
Does anyone see a parallel with broadband access? The Rural US has terrible access to broadband, and it is killing small towns. If we started a Rural Fibre Act, we would see revitalization in small towns because businesses could start to look to locate in these areas.
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If we started a Rural Fibre Act,
Then the incumbent ISPs would shit themselves and have Congress outlaw it. Never mind that they have no intention of ever serving these customers. The REA sort of snuck up on investor owned utilities. It opened the door for alternative organizational structures such as public utilities. They won't let this happen to them again.
Oh FFS (Score:2)
Yeah, the public keeps electing the rich people the parties put in front of them to public office, and acting surprised when these same people keep making law that favors the rich, and keep selecting agency officials that favor the rich, and keep further enriching themselves through the system.
So, yeah, it's stupid. Because the voters are stupid. It's been this way since I've been paying attention (the 1960's, and likely long before that.)
This isn
Too expensive to build a network (Score:2)
Simply eliminate all local monopolies on internet access and you will see all manner of companies jumping into the fray.
Exactly how do you think that would play out? It costs HUGE money to build out a wired network and less but still a lot for wireless. We have local monopolies because for the most part they are natural monopolies [wikipedia.org]. Understand what that means before you say any more. You think AT&T or Comcast is going to play nice with a new entrant? Anyone jumping into a market larger than a single community had better have tens of billions in funding to build a (redundant) physical network from scratch. They alrea
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~{po ~poz~ppo\anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
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So I guess my 110 Baud acoustic coupler modem doesn't qualify. Time for an upgrade!
Re: USRobotic modem (Score:2)
Not true 14400 is a standard speed. And for a long time was the speed of fax machines.
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He said PORT speed not MODEM speed.
As in, DB9/DB25 serial ports.
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The original AC said "3200baud modem". Why is RS-232 port speed now being discussed when the limiting factor was the baud rate and compression over the telco lines?
FWIW, I downloaded the original shareware version of Doom in December of 1993 from an Apogee BBS over a 14400 bps connection. Put it on two 5.25" floppies and under the Christmas tree for my Dad that year.
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Baud doesn't equal connection speed either, at least with newer modems such as your 14400 example as a baud can encode more then one bit and peaked at 2400 or 9600, I forget which.
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How about the PEP mode that the Trailblazer modems had?
These days if you want a modem with some performance you'd have to get a Pactor 4 modem. Or if you want to get really slow, go JT-65.
Re:this will not be a popular opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
But honestly 10 megabits is perfectly fine. I live in rural Mississippi and have a 10 mbps cable connection that loads everything perfectly fine from emails and websites all the way up to 720p netflix steaming. The 25down/4up definition is only 2 years old, and going to 10down/1up as a modification will still be much better than the pre-2015 definition of only 4down/1up.
So much wrong and stupid with this statement I dont know where to begin..
1. Some of us might like 1080p or 4k video streams
2. Try streaming more than 1 video at a time, your 10 mbps will top out fast. And dont get me started on how horrible a slow upload of 1 mbps is to use.
3. So we should not try to excel, we should do the absolute bare minimum. Making america great again eh?
Re:this will not be a popular opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm neither for nor against this redefinition of terms, but there's two different issues here: (1) what speeds do you need to get access to all the bells and whistles, and (2) what speeds are so slow that the government needs to step in and prod things along. Those two speeds don't necessarily need to be the same.
If you can get 10Mbps down, you can do your homework, access job sites, and all of the other reasons cited as justification for the government being involved in the first place. You can also watch a heck of a lot of cat videos, waste time on Facebook, etc. I get 100Mbps down where I live, and I'm super grateful for it, but part of that is cuz I still remember the 300 baud modem days. :)
Anyway, I don't know if the redefining of terms is being done out of bad motives or not, but there is some potential upside to it. For example, TFA talked about how a good chunk of the US doesn't have even 10Mbps yet, so lowering the "good enough" bar to 10Mbps could help keep the focus on those parts of the country that are the most underserved.
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I currently get about 10-15 Mbps down and after dial-up it is fine for now. The problem is that at one time dial-up was fine, then most people got faster pipes and the web pages grew to fill them up. At the end of my dial-up days with crappy lines, it could take half an hour to load a page (if it didn't fail) and web sites just keep growing to fill the average pipe. In a couple of more years this 10 Mbps may well seem slow.
It's like so much tech, I remember upgrading to 8MBs of memory and it seemed huge. Di
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Oh, absolutely - totally agree. Eventually we'll laugh at the thought of 100Mbps being decent, and so on: just like CPU, RAM, drive space, etc., it seems that usage of your net connection will continue to expand to capacity and then push for higher capacity.
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Just looked up my countries goals for internet speeds, http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/internet... [crtc.gc.ca]
With the plan that 90% of Canadians have this by 2021. If a large sparsely populated country can aim
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Totally agree. But:
(1) If a big chunk of the US doesn't even have 10Mbps broadband yet, do you think it'd be a good idea for the US to make that a priority in cases where a decision has to be made on what things to focus on? (versus making sure that, say, everybody with 25Mbps gets bumped to 50Mbps) Obviously the ideal is to make it good everywhere, but if push comes to shove, where should the focus be?
(2) In the US, part of the broadband reach problem is precisely due to government involvement (of the bad
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If you can get 10Mbps down, you can do your homework, access job sites,
I'll throw-in a glib [citation needed] on that. The "homework" I've seen sometimes is poorly-compressed 1080p-only hour-long lecture videos with extremely poor DRM-riddled players that have issues fast-forwarding if you lose your connection. Yes, it's crap, but it's a Problem for a 10Mbps down connection.
Can you point me to an actual example of this or is it a made up scenario? In particular, I'd like to see a real world example of the ill-encoded lecture that just so happens to work ok at 25Mbps (the old minimum threshold) but doesn't on 10Mbps (the new threshold that has you and others up in arms (hint: it probably doesn't work at 25 Mbps either).
For *any* threshold you want to choose, there is always the potential for somebody out there to do something dumb that makes that speed too low - I could just as
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3. So we should not try to excel, we should do the absolute bare minimum. Making america great again eh?
As far as government is involved, the most it ought to mandate is the bare minimum. We have services to make it possible for citizens to have a basic telephone line for little money (in theory anyway, ATT are dicks and find ways to inflate it) because we recognize it as a necessity of modern life. It's how you summon emergency services, for example. A certain minimum level of internet access is necessary to participate in the modern world, and 10 Mbps is probably actually higher than that strictly needs to
Re: this will not be a popular opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
So you don't have kids or family staying? At Thanksgiving at my sister's house there are 6 kids and 10 adults. One TV and dozens of laptops and tablets. Being able to stream 2-4 streams at a time is normal.
My house only has 50mbs but I can watch things stutter when we have a large party
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I'm sure that they brought food and drink to the party, right? It's not unreasonable to ask them to bring their own broadband then either. It's not like there's some physical limitation preventing them from bringing their home connection with them!
Re:this will not be a popular opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
I visited my mother (in rural France) over Christmas, where she gets about 10/1. I'd agree that 10Mb/s down is pretty reasonable as an absolute minimum, but 1Mb/s up is quite painful.
In 2002, I was in a shared house where we decided to pay extra to get the 1Mb/s service from the cable company (their default was 512Kb/s). I stayed on their top tier until it got to 10Mb/s. At that point, I stayed on the 10Mb/s service until it was the cheapest that they offered, then it became 20Mb/s and then 30Mb/s. My most recent move was to a house without cable service, but with FTTH. I'm on their slowest service, which is 54Mb/s down, 9.5Mb/s up. I don't notice much difference between 10 and 54Mb/s downstream, but the difference between 1 and 9.5Mb/s upstream is enormous.
Re:this will not be a popular opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
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'broadband' definitions should only ever escalate
10Mbps is indeed a significant escalation from the 4MBps that was in place a mere 3 years ago [theverge.com]. Wheeler jacked it way too far too fast to serve his political purpose of declaring a scarcity of "broadband" coverage.
To look at a 150% increase from 2015 as "regressive" is about the same as politicians wailing about "spending cuts" when what they really mean is that the spending increase didn't end up being as large as they wanted.
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I have a 4G connection. It isn't too bad though with it pissing rain, I do see about half the speed as on a nice day. For very rural areas such as here where we have a brand new cell tower serving the internet to a community of about 200 households, it is one hell of an improvement on dial-up. Still even on a good day it is about 1/5th of my nations goals for access.
If a country larger and with 10% of the population of America can aim for 50/10, America should be able to do the same.
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And what happens if the monthly data cap is set to 100 MB before you start paying through the nose?
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As the rest of the developed world tries to convert to stupidity as well, don't fear being left behind. Look the British do not even have a functioning government, dream of their Empire and try to leave the EU. Other countries like Poland and Austria are working towards abolishing human rights and separation of power (three branches of government). So no worries. However, if you hoped that the rest of the world will help you getting out of that misery, not gonna happen. Instead we will follow your brave exa
Ooh, moderation and everything (Score:2)
Clearly the answer is "both"
Come blow some modpoints on these comments too, kids. I've got the karma to spend, and I'm happy to do it.
Republicans gonna republicate (Score:2)
Re: Republicans gonna republicate (Score:2)
Of course it does. Why wouldn't it?
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...former FCC boss Michael Powell (now the top lobbyist for the cable industry)...
to know whom these people actually are working for.
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"Frustrated masses are easily kept under control."
Yea, no. Do you know what a riot is?
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Death: [reads a list] The boy wants a pair of trousers that he doesn't have to share, a huge meat pie, a sugar mouse, "a lot of toys" and a puppy named Scruff.
Albert: Ah, how sweet. I shall wipe away a tear, 'cause what he's getting, see, is this wooden toy and an apple.
Death: But the letter clearly...
Albert: I know. It's the socio-economic factors. The world would be in a hell of a mess, eh, if everyone got what they asked for.
Death: I gave them what they wanted in the store...
Albert: Yeah, well, what good
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My broadband supplier is soon upgrading me from 10/100 to 100/100 since that's their lowest offering on media I have. That's sufficient for my needs.
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France/Population: 66.9 million (2016)
Texas/Population: 27.86 million (2016)
Texas should have 200Mbps.
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And yet, Canada, a developed nation with a lower median income and 1/10th the population density is aiming for everyone to have access to a minimum of 50/10. Rural areas should still have decent speeds, even the ones that are a thousand kms from their neighbouring town.
The economic justification is having to compete in the 21st century.