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Network Government The Almighty Buck The Internet United States Technology

Ajit Pai Wants To Raise Rural Broadband Speeds From 10Mbps To 25Mbps (arstechnica.com) 135

Posted by BeauHD from the faster-is-better dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission is planning to raise the rural broadband standard from 10Mbps to 25Mbps in a move that would require faster Internet speeds in certain government-subsidized networks. The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF) distributes more than $1.5 billion a year to AT&T, CenturyLink, and other carriers to bring broadband to sparsely populated areas. Carriers that use CAF money to build networks must provide speeds of at least 10Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads. The minimum speed requirement was last raised in December 2014.

Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he's proposing raising that standard from 10Mbps/1Mbps to 25Mbps/3Mbps. "[W]'re recognizing that rural Americans need and deserve high-quality services by increasing the target speeds for subsidized deployments from 10/1 Mbps to 25/3 Mbps," Pai wrote in a blog post that describes agenda items for the FCC's December 12 meeting. "[T]he program should support high-quality services; rural Americans deserve services that are comparable to those in urban areas," Pai also wrote. The new speeds "will apply to future projects but won't necessarily apply to broadband projects that are already receiving funding," Ars notes. "For ongoing projects, the FCC will use incentives to try to raise speeds. More money will be offered to carriers that agree to upgrade speeds to 25Mbps/3Mbps, a senior FCC official said in a conference call with reporters."
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Ajit Pai Wants To Raise Rural Broadband Speeds From 10Mbps To 25Mbps More

Ajit Pai Wants To Raise Rural Broadband Speeds From 10Mbps To 25Mbps

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  • And providers will do as they always have done. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @08:18PM (#57676954) Homepage Journal

    They'll take the money, pad their bottom lines, and continue NOT actually improving the state of rural broadband.

    Also, betting the window on actual implementation is so far into the future that this is nothing more than a blatant present to them anyhow.

    We plan to boost the definition of broadband to 25Mbps! In 2025!
    Implementation? Maybe about the time that 25Gbps is in common use everywhere BUT rural areas!

    • Exactly right. It's easy to see why this is being done: rural customers are a cinch for ISP's to claim that the upgrade isn't profitable. They'll get a new, hefty payout from Uncle Sam to cut in the upgrade over the next (10? 20?) years. They'll execute the upgrade in a few key markets to prove they're actually getting work done, while 90% of the job is ignored, while 100% of the cash is taken.

      • Re:And providers will do as they always have done. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Harlequin80 ( 1671040 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @09:19PM (#57677232)

        Why not just have the money paid on connection?

        Think of it bounty style. Everytime you connect someone at 25/3 or higher your will get $X. Overtime X increases. That way providers will hit the low hanging fruit first. And then come back for the hard ones once X is high enough.

        • That way providers will hit the low hanging fruit first.

          So just widen the technological gap that already exists?

          • Well not for all the people who now have connections that didnt before....

            There is already a gap. A bounty approach will move more to the haves from the have nots.

            • What makes you think the have nots will get upgraded instead of just the haves at low speeds? You do realise that selectively focusing on the areas that make the most money is precisely what caused the divide in the first place right?

              • When X is low the first people to benefit will be those who already have a connection, but one that falls under the broadband benchmark. The cost of implementation would be the lowest and so the required push would be the lowest.

                There will come a point where connections incentivised by a bounty of X will start to drop. At this point you increase X. This will push the next rung of consumers into the band of being commercially viable to run a connection. You continue this process until you have reached th

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          Because the FCC's goal under Ajit is not to give people better broad-band, it's to give the big ISPs more money.

        • "That way providers will hit the low hanging fruit first."

          Yep. Everyone in the country seat within 600 meters of the provider's office will get access to high speed internet. And the corporate officers will get a bonus

          "And then come back for the hard ones ..." ... Sometime in the Summer of 4692 BCE..

      • Up-vote this post...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by garcia ( 6573 )

      I have DSL at my lake home. Itâ(TM)s 1.3mbit/290k. Clearly theyâ(TM)re already doing it today; this is just more for them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kerashi ( 917149 )

        I have about that same speed at my vacation home. Actually the upstream is lower I think. However, the local electric cooperative is working on installing fiber, so maybe in a few years I'll either have fiber there, or CenturyLink will upgrade its network.

        My home connection is 10 megabit DSL. I'd love more, but I consider myself lucky to have that.

      • I'm rural, and happy with Windstream. When I first got DSL, 1.5 down/384k up was the limit for my distance from CO. Next guy down the line is too far away... When they offered me 3 down, I tried it but couldn't maintain a connection... back to 1.5.

        2 years ago, massive fiber rollout... I now get 6down/1up, and could get 16 down but I think I will have that distance problem. And with some basic shaping (so I can do homework when competing with multiple streams) it is tolerable for all but gaming. When I g

    • You do understand that living in rural areas means you get some things (dark skies, less traffic, imo a generally better quality of life) and don't get others (night life,, multitudes of things to do, corner coffee shops, the best broadband)?

      This seems pretty obvious.

    • Is it me, or is it with each boost in speed, pages load just as slowly, going all the way back to the Days of Yore when 56K modems reigned?

      Just like each processor gen barely keeps up with Windows Bloat, each increment in connection speed barely keeps up with rendering annoying video ads with the sound turned way up?

  • Corruption (Score:3)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @08:22PM (#57676964)

    The definition specifically caters to cable broadband providers who have shitty upstream and infinite downstream.

    The actual 706 definition of broadband makes no distinction of any kind between sending and receiving. It is about capabilities not directionality.

    If it must take 25 mbit to "receive" high quality voice, data, graphics and video then it must also be true that 25 mbit is required to "originate" the same.

    • Except in the US almost all connections except for true business class (ie, comes with a SLA) are meant to consume data, not generate it. Well, beyond the initial request for the latest stream of the Kardashians or whatever and any TCP ACK traffic related to consuming.

      • Except in the US almost all connections except for true business class (ie, comes with a SLA) are meant to consume data, not generate it. Well, beyond the initial request for the latest stream of the Kardashians or whatever and any TCP ACK traffic related to consuming.

        The point of government involvement WRT CAF funding is ensuring equal opportunity in underserved markets. The question is whether you can work from home (voice, video conferences, remote data access, telemedicine..etc) and do your homework.

        While streaming Kardashians may be important to you it's totally irrelevant to the topic at hand.

        • I disagree. The topic at hand is to somehow keep the natives lulled, not to let them participate in meaningful activity. In other words, yes, the goal is to give the Kardasians (or however these useless cunts are spelled) to the masses.

          • I disagree. The topic at hand is to somehow keep the natives lulled, not to let them participate in meaningful activity. In other words, yes, the goal is to give the Kardasians (or however these useless cunts are spelled) to the masses.

            On what basis do you disagree? Keeping couch potatoes happy isn't mentioned in the CAF documents anywhere. The relevant legislation (47 USC 1302) makes the purpose and priorities quite clear.

            My comment is not about denying couch potatoes access to Kardasians. It's simply stating that's not the point of enabling legislation and FCC initiatives to that end. It's about making sure people can use the Internet for the full range of purposes expressed in the legislation. 10mbit is more than enough to downloa

            • C'mon, you don't put that into writing. Did they put "to keep the blacks where we think they belong" when they wrote the Jim Crow laws?

              • C'mon, you don't put that into writing. Did they put "to keep the blacks where we think they belong" when they wrote the Jim Crow laws?

                WTF!? Is there an objective basis for your claim?

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @08:25PM (#57676982)

    Why are the U.S. taxpayers subsidizing these failing industries? Look at Comcast. They only had $4.3 billion in free cash flow [businesswire.com] in the second quarter of 2018. Why should we pour more of our hard earned money down the drain for a company which can't survive without its corporate welfare payments?

    And what about Verizon? They've only had $26.2 billion in free cash flow [verizon.com] so far this year. What a travesty that such a failing company has to beg for money from the taxpayers.

  • isn't this the same moron.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    that pushed to LOWER it to 10mbps in the first place?

  • rural Americans deserve services that are comparable to those in urban areas

    I live in a fairly well-populated area, and the choices/service sucks royal rotting eggs. If that's the standard, good luck.

  • ...rural Americans deserve services that are comparable to those in urban areas..."

    Why? I am a 'rural American' and even I don't agree with that. I expect that there are costs to living in the middle of nowhere and connectivity is going to be one of them. Besides, as many people have pointed out, we have flushed gobs of public money down that hole before and got nothing. I still don't have the ISDN service out here the industry was subsidized to provide years ago. In fact, the phone service theoretically available out here doesn't even reliably support dial-up. We depend on a radio link to the next town, but that is my problem, not that of 'urban Americans'.

    [Actually, the fixed radio link works surprisingly well. Much better than the land-line didn't. Except when there is lightning. Anywhere.]

    • Well, they grant them monopolies, which is the real problem Comcast quotes homeowners here $240,000 per mile to extend the cable line to the next house.

      That's not free market pricing, obviously. Interstate highways only cost 4x that amount per mile.

    • I think it might be the definition of comparable. And it's also Politician speak.

      I don't think a baseline connectivity standard is a bad thing to aim for. Targetting 10/1 or 25/3 for rural doesn't mean that equals urban populations. Most urban populations should really be looking at 100/100 on todays tech. Fiber to the curb and gpon tech to the house does that with bucket loads of capacity to spare.

      But for day to day outcomes for most people, having a 10/1 or 25/3 stable connection is comparable to havi

    • It doesn't make sense to extend broadband to every remote house. There is an economic case to be made for extending it to rural towns and farms. That said, I think the sensible economic case is for perhaps 5 Mbps -- giving rural towns/farms 25 Mbps so they can watch 4K video without buffering isn't going to improve the local economy any more than a basic 5 Mbps.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by 4im ( 181450 )

      I still don't have the ISDN service out here the industry was subsidized to provide years ago. In fact, the phone service theoretically available out here doesn't even reliably support dial-up.

      Seriously? What kind of 3rd-world country is that? North Korea?

      With even ISDN being decommissioned around here (western Europe), I guess we should petition our telecom providers to donate their old stuff, maybe Orange Guy will even consider is as NATO payment.

      Sheesh!

      And please don't tell us about low-density areas, Scandinavia has those, and they still have decent
      connections.

  • Rural? (Score:3)

    by bob4u2c ( 73467 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @08:44PM (#57677062)
    I'm defiantly not in a Rural area, I'm within about 2 miles of a California State University, but they "best" AT&T can do here is 1.5Mb download. The tech on the phone could only boost that to 1.8Mb if he really tried and it would error out frequently at that speed. So how in the heck are they going to do that for some place 20 miles out of town when they can't even provide that a few miles from their main branch?

    Is this another hand out to telecommunication carriers because people are dropping phone and cable services?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by davesays ( 922765 )
      We have already *paid* them to provide it, and they CAN. That they don't is another question.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm defiantly not in a Rural area,

      Why defiant? So much attitude!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bob4u2c ( 73467 )

        Why defiant? So much attitude!

        Did you not catch the living in a college town part?

        Down with the man's rules! Down with the government! Down with everything!!!

      • I'm defiantly not in a Rural area,

        Why defiant? So much attitude!

        definite -> definate -> defiant

        misspelling + dyslexia = serendipitous meaning

  • Why not 100MB or 1GB? (Score:3)

    by cliffjumper222 ( 229876 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @08:49PM (#57677092)

    Good idea but why not push for 100MB and just be done with it? If you are going to lay a cable to a rural location just make it fibre already. Or, if it's going to be wireless, used fixed 5G or something fast.

    • Most likely because he's going to push the Internet over power lines solution, which runs at about that speed.

      Can't let the rural folks get their hands on Internet 3 with our 100GB ports at most major sites and 40GB ports in almost every building, after all.

  • signifying no real broadband delivered to people for the most part

  • Steering dollars to 5G from Connect America Fund? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @09:16PM (#57677216)

    The current standards for the Connect America were kept low so that they could show a map full of territory that is covered with 'high speed broadband Internet access'. The FCC wanted to look good.

    Now that we're on the cusp of 5G, the FCC wants to change the rules of the Connect America (Slush) Fund to turn it into a giveaway for 5G wireless providers (such as his former corporate employer).

    They need the number to be high enough to knock out many of the existing landline offerings (often local or regional companies), but at the same time low enough not to significantly obligate those 5G providers to offer significantly more than they want to.

    It is a delightful balancing act of minimal levels and timing that is used to shift the reward from wired landline providers to wireless providers. I'm sure his sponsors couldn't have asked for anything more.

  • Fuck Ajit Pai

  • Ajit Pai... (Score:3)

    by c ( 8461 ) <beauregardcp@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @09:34PM (#57677310)

    ... talks up yet another scheme to funnel taxpayer money to big telcos.

  • Municipal Broadband roadblocked in 20 states (Score:3)

    by najajomo ( 4890785 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @09:41PM (#57677354)
    "Ajit Pai Wants To Raise Rural Broadband Speeds From 10Mbps To 25Mbps

    One way would be to stop impeding municipal districts implimenting their own broadband infrastructure.

    Municipal Broadband Is Roadblocked or Outlawed in 20 States [broadbandnow.com]

  • This is simply a "throw them a bone" move from Pai to an incoming Democratic-controlled house of reps. An attempt to not have them call him in an crawl up his ass like they did Zuckerberg.

  • Raising the speed in rural areas is useless. Every time I call Comcast, CenturyLink or Verizon they say it will cost them 5 million dollars to put the infrastructure the area. Then they say even if every customer in the area subscribed for their most expensive service it would still take 200 years to break even. All of them say it is NOT cost effective to put infrastructure in rural areas. So raising the speed from 10Mb to 25Mb will not help in any way. Forcing these giant ISPs to install the infrastructure

  • Translation (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @03:20AM (#57678334) Homepage Journal

    The FCC won't permit town's to provide Internet because that unfairly competes, but will pay large sums of money to obscenely rich providers, particularly the ones paying their boss under the table, to alter the throttling settings because then they can avoid neutrality lawsuits by pretending to provide better service.

    Besides, the FCC has previously ruled they don't have to provide the rated speed, they only have to advertise it.

  • Britain was shipping its prisoners to Australia back in 18th century.

    The conditions on the prison ships were horrible, and half prisoners perished on the journey. The government was giving the ship company a fixed amount per prisoner.

    One bureaucrat made one simple rule change. Instead of paying for each prisoner boarding the ship, they paid for each prisoner delivered in Sydney. No other change. Suddenly the casualty rate dropped from 50% to 0% in two months.

    If FCC pays it for actual high speed connecti

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