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FCC chair: Speed standard of 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up isn’t good enough anymore::Chair proposes 100Mbps national standard and an evaluation of broadband prices.
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It’s 2023. Anything less than symmetrical gigabit is nonsense. We shouldn’t have to settle for overpriced crumbs from ISPs.
Symmetrical gigabit is a bit much for a baseline. Should it be widely available for all, and for a good price? Absolutely. But plenty of people (probably a majority even) could be adequately served by something like 300 down/100 up as a baseline tier.
Let me go ahead and steal a quote from JFK:
“We choose to [build nationwide symmetrical gigabit fiber] in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”
- John “I hate my worthless nephew RFK Jr.”Fitzpatrick Kennedy
imo the asymmetry only serves to upsell content creators to business plans. I do agree with you on the speeds though, gigabit is a bit overblown for average joe but it should be an option in most places for people that need it (Content Creators, WFH Visual Artists, Garage Startups)
It’s not about what people need. It’s about building infrastructure for new services and applications.
Besides, digging a trench is digging a trench. Just put in the fiber. It’s 2023.
Today, maybe. But what about in ten years’ time?
IMO the focus should be on lowering the prices. A lot of people in my country still rely on spotty mobile data as their primary internet. Imagine 100 mbps fiber for $10 a month, that would be awesome.
Lol In Italy I get gigabit for about 6€
Though let’s be honest, this is not something generally available.
It is throughout Europe. We’ve been getting hosed in the states for years.
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O RLY? Which ISP?
Right, it’s actually 30€ with TIM, recently upgraded from the €15 plan, my bad. Obviously a huge and glaring oversight. Tell me again what people are paying in the states for a percentage of that speed again and reflexively defend the shit system, please. €6 is what I pay for my unlimited calls, text and 150gb mobile data plan.
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I don’t disagree, but I think even just setting it to 500M symmetrical would be a MASSIVE improvement and a more achievable goal. Few regions right now are equipped for fiber and even fewer homes.
Most homes in the US have a coax connection, and with current tech coax connections can do a little over a gig bandwidth total (up+down). That said, we should be quickly ratcheting up to 500/500 while the fiber rollout hopefully accelerates.
The depressing part is how much fiber is out there, but dark or locked in ridiculous agreements with private owners that will keep it from being the municipal service it deserves to be.
The last house I owned had fiber in the front yard that the ISP refused to hook up. The entire neighborhood (300+ houses) had the same situation. Verizon laid the fiber, and Frontier refused to let anyone use it.
Why does it matter if it’s 500/500 or 1000/1000? Once the fiber is there it makes no difference. In fact, 500Mbit symmetrical is probably more expensive to deploy.
Funny thing is, they are selling vapor. They are renting the usage of equipment, nothing more. There’s no finite amount of internet and you have to use it carefully. Sure there’s limits in that equipment, but essentially prices are all over-inflated. In my shitty little country I have 350/150 for around 15€, 300 channels TV included. For gigabit I’d pay a bit more, around 30€.
Holy shit, there are people still using 25/3? How the heck can you function with that? I’m not entirely facetious: with trackers and ads and “web 2.0” nonsense and way over provisioning , I’ve seen “simple” web sites bog down on much faster connections.
As one data point, my ex had Comcast’s, I think 50/5 or something, and my kids constantly complained about the network over there. Part of it is being spoiled by my true gigabit symmetrical, part of it is the worst company in America, but the reality is that it’s noticeable
25/3 is perfectly usable for a single user, provided you don’t need to upload stuff. Watching 1080p60 on YouTube only needs slightly over 12 mbps.
I’m not defending the current state of the internet services, just saying it’s not that bad.
Honestly I am really happy when I get such high speeds. 25Mbps feels blazing fast for me. Everything loading/downloading so quickly. An average song in the FLAC 16/44 format would download in just 10 seconds instead of up to 5 minutes.
And there’s already even 10Gbps available. I can’t even imagine that. You could download a whole 4K movie in a matter of seconds!
Anyway, this is what I have:
Image link for compatibilityI can only dream.
I think one of the issues I have with “normal” bandwidth is being spoiled by gigabit fiber. I don’t do anything to require that kind of bandwidth, not even close, but it just works. No matter what I do. Every time
Cable internet is notoriously poor and it really is. Sure, your minimum standard high speed internet is mathematically more than I need, “up to” more than I need, but the reality is far worse. I regularly see network lag and high latency, it regularly causes visible issues. It tends to be slow and frustrating even when the advertised speeds shouldn’t be.
If we’re going to set a standard based on advertised speeds, we need to do the same math that providers use to set a more useable standard. Or we can set the standard to actual speeds and watch them scream
My whole family house is on 25/5 in Australia. Most of laptops in the house are 1366x768 (so 720p youtube video) and we use adblockers.
The key is setting up proper queue control on your router (Openwrt + SQM) so that one person downloading or uploading doesn’t ruin the latency for everyone else browsing the web; before I did that a single person downloading a steam game or uploading something to Google drive made the web unbrowsable for everyone. Sadly this only works if your internet connection link speed is stable and reliable.
I’m not entirely facetious: with trackers and ads and “web 2.0” nonsense and way over provisioning , I’ve seen “simple” web sites bog down on much faster connections.
A lot of web 2.0 nonsense slowness is caused by executing megabytes of javascript. Fetching the few MB itself isn’t the bottleneck for us :)
I live in Germany, most people here have that or less
Best connection available in my town is a super overpriced 25/3, but what you actually get is more like 10/0.5. No fiber lines, no other providers around other than satellite, and no demand for more means it’s just stagnant here
Yes, let’s pay them to just take the money… for the third time!
Pathetic. The acceptance of this terrible service speed shows how the American public is so isolated they don’t know when they’re being shafted by big business and the politicians the rich and powerful own.
No more lobbying. Institutionalized bribery is killing the American public. Healthcare, food, workplace rights and safety, and quality of services. Everything’s compromised.
I was so happy when we finally got a 2nd internet provider where I live. Now both providers offer steep discounts to keep customers. I upgraded my 450mpbs coax connection to 1gbps fiber when the new ISP came to town. My promotional period just ran out, so I called the ISP. They set me up with a new promotion for 2gbps at less than the price I was paying for 1gbps, and at the end of the promotional period it’ll be the same price I was paying for the 1gbps service. Competition ftw!
That’s a dream. A pray for even a single competitor on my street.
I live in hotels. A good week is when I can measure in Mb and not Kb. A great one is when it’s more than 3mbps on a regular basis.😢
Asymmetric speeds are a disgrace. Internet used to be about exchange of content, ideas and collaboration. You consumed, but also contributed. The overall focus on high download low upload is clearly the sign telcos want Internet to be just a troth of content, not much different from cable tv.
I want fiber internet so bad, I live in a relatively big city for Christ’s sake it shouldn’t take this long
Big problem in the USA is infrastructure. Even cable service can be unavailable for people in rural areas. There have been situations where people had to co-op the cost to lay cable to their area. The cable companies won’t spend the money to extend coverage without the return in customer numbers.
Fiber deployment has lagged cable by at least ten years, probably more. It’s a bummer because fiber is greatly better. There are populated areas you still can’t get fiber.
People in rural areas can have problems getting service because there has not been enough government subsidy to deploy infrastructure. In some rural areas the cell network is the only option for service, and not a good one either.
The Obama administration made a call to increase subsidies for the expansion of internet infrastructure, but nothing ever came of it. If the political climate had been the same when they proposed the interstate highway system, we’d all still be driving on dirt roads.
It’s ironic the country that invented the internet has done such a poor job of deploying the infrastructure for it. Other countries are doing a greatly better job. So it doesn’t do much good to increase the standards if it’s not possible for them to apply in the first place.
People in rural areas can have problems getting service because there has not been enough government subsidy to deploy infrastructure.
Technically the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allocated a ton of money for fiber infrastructure, but telecom providers rolled it out in dense urban areas with a lot of customers, bought each other up and then pocketed the extra cash.
Fiber to the premise in rural areas is insanely expensive but I see it like a modern version of the post office. If you want to be able to write a letter to anyone and have it be delivered you need to set the price so that rural customers aren’t paying costs that are orders of magnitude higher.
Let me fix that;
People in rural areas can have problems getting service because there has not been
enoughproper government subsidy to deploy infrastructure.I mean if the feds just toss money at these providers they’ll use it how they please. It should be a matter of government doing what it is necessary to deploy service as widely as possible. Without oversight it’s just giving them free money.
I suppose now that the cell network is able to provide “hotspot” service that could be an out for subsidy, but it sure won’t make a 100Mbps standard. On 4G the best my phone can do is 50Mbps when close to a tower, less when signal strength is lower. You can get much higher speeds on 5G, but it’s even more affected by tower distance. You’re not going to get that in a rural area, same infrastructure problem.
My connection is 10/2. Please help me
Here’s an interesting thing- we had Spectrum on copper and we’re semi-rural so it was only about 30/5. Then a local company came in and offered to install fiber in the neighborhood if 40% signed up. Suddenly our Spectrum speeds went up to about 80/10. Then the neighborhood told Spectrum to fuck off and now we have decent fiber speeds. I’m getting 400/400 now and I could get it even faster if I wanted to pay for it.
Yep, typical. Spectrum in my area (like 5-7 years ago) suddenly over doubled everyone’s speeds almost overnight once competition came in. I loved telling them to pound sand as I got symmetrical gigabit installed.
Ajit Pai never raised download speeds? Nooo. You don’t say. Asshole who was against net neutrality didn’t do anything to increase quality of network. Can’t be.
We have 600/600 Mbps… In a third world country smh
They considered that a standard? 25 meg?
Jesus wept. I haven’t had internet that slow in well over a decade here in the UK!
How do they manage things like 150GB game downloads over there, or 3 or 4 people all using the connection at the same time…
Not so much a standard as in “everyone should actually use the internet at this speed” but more as in “the bare minimum level, everyone should have at least this speed available (and we’ll help pay to upgrade people stuck at slower speeds)”, I believe.
It was still a low speed for that of course. It apparently hadn’t been raised since the Obama administration (2015).
Rural internet speeds are often… not comparable to more densely populated areas, shall we say. My (European) perspective: I had about ~3 Mbit down (over ADSL) until I moved about a decade ago (on a good day, while paying for “up to 40 Mbit” (IIRC) that the line apparently just could not physically deliver to my house). Meanwhile, 1 km along the road people in town had cable internet (~100 Mbit down).
Luckily, both populations have since benefited from a fiber rollout by a smaller telco, but people in town still got that upgrade about 5 years sooner and without paying a ~€2k connection fee. AFAIK there are still areas in my country where ADSL is the best available…
I’m in a hotel in London now and am getting less than 10/10. So not necessarily better. I’m an American who normally suffers under Comcast and have 60/25 or so at home.
