FCC Commissioner Thinks Ultra-Fast Broadband Just a “Novelty”

Megalith

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It's no surprise what the FCC Commissioner really thinks about broadband, as this is the guy who thought 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up was a severe overestimate of how high-speed internet service should be defined. O’Rielly has now gone on record again about his disdain for speedy broadband, hinting that it is an unnecessary gimmick that actually ties up providers from addressing users who are merely seeking basic connective services. Back in 2015, the FCC Commissioner downplayed 4K media and its pervasiveness, being technology that is obviously reliant on fast networks.

…that's not really true. Ultra-fast broadband and even consistent coverage aren't somehow mutually exclusive; we can focus on getting broadband to rural markets (first at slower speeds), and still enjoy gigabit speeds provided by the likes of Google Fiber. There's not a longer wait for broadband in Cleveland, for example, just because Google Fiber wants to bring broadband to San Antonio. As we've noted, the real reason there are stalled rural broadband deployments is a growing cable monopoly in areas that telcos are effectively giving up on. That FCC data now shows this is not somehow the fault of faster gigabit broadband itself.
 
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Unfortunately this is set to continue indefinitely until wireless with landline speeds becomes common, which might take a few decades at minimum. Digging and laying cable without a guaranteed subscriber base is a difficult and expensive job that nobody wants to do. A company as big and rich as Google didn't have the stomach for it, and if they don't see the value in it then it will be very hard to convince anyone else. Removing all government regulation red tape around it would help, but I don't know if that alone would be enough. You would probably either have to force them to do it (questionable legality) or pay them to do it with tax money and incentives (How much?).
 
Thankfully I already have Google Fiber. They aren't going to impose caps or screw shit up like the fucktard cable and phone industry are waiting to do now that their puppets have some power. Hopefully any damage done during this administration can be easily reversed in 4 years (or less).
 
I guess this affects who?

I mean everywhere I've lived has already laid the foundation for decent high speed internet.

I don't think I've lived anywhere that doesn't do 100/10 at minimum and some of those places were not destinations in themselves.

Also as someone with a 4K tv and a streaming device the only thing I've watched in 4K is the man in the high castle. I figured by now the Super Bowl would be broadcast in 4K.

Get me content and then I'll worry about this numb nuts.
 
You know I really dislike the pick for the FCC Comm myself. But he does have a point. 25 down 5 up is way more than what most people need.

Here's the deal, if you mark this as a utility and start regulating cost, then 10 down 2.5 up is more than reasonable to do basic surfing: Information (news, weather, or instructional), Stream basic music & videos (youtube/netflix/amazon), News, system updates, or to look for a job. I've been running 10 down 2.5 up for a couple months now and noticed no real degradation in performance. Most server sites throttle your bandwidth to below that limit any way as a means to control cost. (Unless you pay them otherwise)

4K is a luxury and not necessary to the benefit of the public at large.

But if he says net neutrality is BS, or that media providers/broadband companies should be total free market, I will quite simply give him a middle finger for being a moron.
 
Just playing devil's advocate here. In my area there is basically the cable company and AT&T for internet service. AT&T covers only a portion of the city and nothing outside of the city limits. In fact I can't get DSL over 512k at my house. I have a 50 meg cable connection currently and I can upgrade to 100 meg if I wanted to. Personally I don't see the need. The average consumer isn't using that much bandwidth. Not saying the people on this site, but MOST Americans are on Facebook and Youtube and they are looking at it on their phone screen. PC use and sales are down. The average person doesn't care what the picture quality is on Netflix nor could they probably even tell the difference between a 720p and 4K stream side by side.

Now, with that in mind, I am all for more competition, but it isn't going to happen. The monopolies are there and they aren't going anywhere. The only way to change it is if everyone cancels their cable / dsl connections in protest. Maybe, and only maybe then will it matter. If Comcast went from 100 million subscribers to 50 overnight they would panic and shareholders would want to know what is going on, but lets face it, that isn't going to happen.

For the average user maybe that amount of bandwidth is acceptable. It isn't for me, but I am the 1%, or 10% whatever in this case.
 
It doesn't matter what the fcc head believes. It all depends on what your customers want. If there was competition, then we could really see what people are willing to pay for what kind of speed given the choice.

Break up local monopolies and duopolies. Give people choices like there is in every other industry.
 
I was "discussing" with a republican friend the other day, and I was telling him how a very specific bad thing for consumers that trump has done is put Ajit Pai at the head of the FCC. Now net-neutrality will be reversed.

And he's like "that's what you want!"
Me: "No because net-neutrality prevents provider from screening network packets and throttling or limiting your activity."
He: "Yes. We don't want that. So you're against net-neturality."
Me: "No. Net-neturality means they have to be neutral and treat all traffic the same."
He: "No, net-neutrality is the opposite. It's the government regulation that allows them to filter traffic."
Me: o_O


And by the way, my friend is a senior software engineer who generally understands this stuff very well.

The problem is that people who hated obama wanted to oppose everything he did. Fine that's politics. But they've created this whole alternate reality where every policy is filtered through a political prism and confused and twisted until most people have no idea what's being talked about. People don't vote "about issues" anymore because they're just too disoriented.
 
Yea, he's right. My 56k modem only buffers 4k content over the course of a week. But, hey, I only pay $20 bucks a month. :rolleyes:
 
This jackasses will be out of office in 4 years. Whatever shit they try and pull and or end up doing can be reversed when Cuban gets into office or Hillary.
 
That guy is a tool and I feel sorry for you guys being stuck having to deal with these clowns in office.
 
This jackasses will be out of office in 4 years. Whatever shit they try and pull and or end up doing can be reversed when Cuban gets into office or Hillary.

You know why Hillary isn't sitting in office right now? Because she did unethical and shady shit along with the DNC. And what did she do? The usual politician BS: Avoid personal responsibility and apply double standards. That made people unethusiastic about her. Hillary has no one to blame but herself for doing stupid shit.

Don't get me wrong, I HATE Trump. But Hillary is done. And good riddance. Enough with political dynasties and political elite who are out of touch with everyone else.

And Mark Cuban is an idiot. No, he really is. He doesn't call the big shots any more. If he were so important to running his companies, he wouldn't be donating so much of his personal time at the AVS forums. Like Trump, he's just a guy with money who got lucky enough one day with an investment to cash in. If you look up interviews with him he even admitted, "I don't care or even look at what I invest in. I turn that over to my advisers to make the most money." (paraphrased) This loosely translates as, "If it makes me money, I don't care if all the companies I invest in are overseas F'n the American people."

That said, I hope Wheeler comes back in four years.
 
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Try having a family wanting to utilize bandwidth five different things at the same time. :confused::whistle:

As long as the profit margins are high the companies will gladly deliver. We wouldn't be inundated with advertisements in all forms of media about high bandwidth if companies didn't see a profit in it. Ma Bell was broken up for a reason and we are seeing why in ATT and other's fight to not allow access to the last mile.
 
She didn't do anything the rest of them haven't already done or will do. That's for sure.



Anyways, the point being that whatever these guys do takes time to ramp up. These guys will most likely be out of office before too much harm can be done.


Trump has proved that we can elect a celebrity. While we would never see Kanye in office, Cuban would prove even more popular than Trump.
 
If I could even get 25/3 in my area. Then again, Google Fiber has basically given up, so I know it will never, ever improve.
 
Aside from streaming video, what is the need for 25down instead of 4 right now.


I don't think you guys bitching know the ramifications for changing that literature.
 
But if he says net neutrality is BS, or that media providers/broadband companies should be total free market, I will quite simply give him a middle finger for being a moron.

I will go ahead and tell you to get your finger good and ready. Ajit has already started the undoing.
 
If I could even get 25/3 in my area. Then again, Google Fiber has basically given up, so I know it will never, ever improve.


Those are rumors about giving up. All they've said is that ATT and Verzion has made it tough for them to deploy fiber. Google Fiber just launched in a few new areas about 2 weeks ago. I have Google Fiber here in KC going on 4 years. I'm getting 90MB/s down or ... 9gb MKV movie in 2 1/2 minutes.


They are not going anywhere or selling out. In fact, they are beta testing a new wireless service here in Kansas City that's going to be a huge deal.


They are launching in some other areas soon well
 
I don't give a rats ass about immigration, but once you start dicking around with my internet speed, we have a problem.
 
Aside from streaming video, what is the need for 25down instead of 4 right now.


I don't think you guys bitching know the ramifications for changing that literature.


Agreed brother. Why work efficiently when I can sit there and wait for things to load like it's 1995.
 
And you know how well that worked in the past!

/s

Yep. To get a company to do something against their interest, you can either use a stick or you can use a carrot. In the case of the cablecos, if you use a stick they are going to fight you tooth and nail and keep you in the court system for a decade, and I'm pretty sure they are completely indifferent to carrots while their money printers are running 24x7 with the status quo.
 
Lets keep it an internet for peasants, they don't need to have access to the digital economy, all they're good for is shoveling dirt. /s

No infrastructure = Behind in the digital age. Behind on the digital age = why do we need modern infrastructure? It goes in circles, but the world doesn't stand still.

Major cities and trade hub states will probably have the means to invest in it themselves to avoid this mess, but what about the flyover states? Will they just continue to lag behind and then complain about jobs some more while everyone else continues milking the ever growing digital economy?


"Digital age challenged: Oh what's the big deal? my 1080p youtube is running smooth" lol.
 
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Its cute that you all think what Tom "the former Comcast lobbyist" Wheeler did and called "net neutrality" was anything of the sort. No one is going to touch the REAL problems of transparency with these companies and it will never get better.

For starters if you sell 25 down, then it better be 25 down ALL the time. Do something about data caps (mobile and wired), there isn't a finite number of GBs to go around, so expressly define that.

Figure out a way to get more people to lay wire or get the cell companies to deploy 5g as a in home solution. I don't have an answer but you have to break barriers to entry.

Just come out and say that it is a conflict of interest to be providing the data pipe AND own content to be delivered.

Then "net neutrality" will actually mean something.
 
The thing to keep in mind is that people here are not "average" users. I live in an area that has been set aside for Comcast, but since I live a few miles outside of the city limits, they don't provide any service. And no other cable company can either. So for a few years I had to put up with crappy 10/1 DSL. That was fine for surfing, email, etc., but barely usable for streaming 720p video. Obviously cloud-based services like system backups were a no-go, which didn't really bother me because I don't use them, but it might be a problem for some. Gaming was marginal sometimes, especially if someone else was using bandwidth. Video chatting worked OK, but hi-rez streaming (ala twitch) was not possible. So for the average person 10/1 is an acceptable minimum Internet connection. It is probably not enough for a family. But for power users it would be barely better than stone knives and bear skins.

A new service provider recently installed a wireless AP nearby and I now have 25/5 service. Streaming 1080p video is now smooth and games are glitch free, even if someone else is surfing or streaming video in another room. Cloud based backups would still be slow, but usable I think. For the average person this would be more than enough bandwidth, and for a family this would be an acceptable minimum Internet connection. For a power user these speeds would be barely tolerable and would represent the most minimal Internet connection.
 
I recall Jon Stewart referring to this man's appointment as "putting a dingo in charge of the daycare".

Actually, that comment was used by John Oliver to describe Tim Wheeler. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkjkQ-wCZ5A Tim Wheeler actually did the right thing.

The NEW FCC commissioner is exactly what the big telecoms want.

FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly is squarely on the side of industry on this subject, having voted down the FCC's higher 25 Mbps benchmark. Even though 25 Mbps is a far from radical benchmark, and 3 Mbps upstream remains a bit of a joke, O'Rielly's dissent (pdf), made his disdain for faster speeds (and the technologies that will use them) abundantly clear:

"To justify setting the new benchmark at 25/3, as opposed to the current 4/1 or even 10/1 as several commenters suggested, the Report notes that 4K TV requires 25 Mbps. But 4K TV is still relatively new and is not expected to be widely adopted for years to come. While the statute directs us to look at “advanced” telecommunications capability, this stretches the concept to an untenable extreme. Some people, for example, believe, probably incorrectly, that we are on the path to interplanetary teleportation. Should we include the estimated bandwidth for that as well? "
 
You know I really dislike the pick for the FCC Comm myself. But he does have a point. 25 down 5 up is way more than what most people need.

Here's the deal, if you mark this as a utility and start regulating cost, then 10 down 2.5 up is more than reasonable to do basic surfing: Information (news, weather, or instructional), Stream basic music & videos (youtube/netflix/amazon), News, system updates, or to look for a job. I've been running 10 down 2.5 up for a couple months now and noticed no real degradation in performance. Most server sites throttle your bandwidth to below that limit any way as a means to control cost. (Unless you pay them otherwise)

4K is a luxury and not necessary to the benefit of the public at large.

This +1.

I have the choice of 150mb down for $88, 50mb for $78/month, or 15mb for $63/month

I have the 50mb which is plenty for our household, and would switch to 30mb if it was half the price.
$63 for 15mb is just crazy.
 
1. Yes, the man is an idiot. I believe that is well established.
2. the issues with bandwidth and data usage limits with US ISPs is something that needs to be fixed through the market. Take the cuffs off businesses in this country and allow more ISPs to open. Require that all cities and states withdraw laws that limit the abilities of new businesses to form to provide broadband internet that support the monopolies of companies like Comcast and TWC. That would fix these issues.
 
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