Speedier Broadband Standards? Pai’s FCC Says 25Mbps Is Fast Enough

brogers said:
I would like to see the upload increased. I have 20 down / 1.5 up in my area. When CrashPlan discontinued their consumer service and pushed me to switch, it was going to take nearly 2 months to backup my data assuming I didn't use it for anything else. Maybe something more along the lines of 5 mbps upload minimum?
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For cable, that is coming, though slowly. The reason it is asymmetric is because there isn't a lot of frequency available to upstream. So with DOCSIS 3.0 on a given node a carrier could easily have 48, or even more, channels of downstream (modems only support 32, but they can have more and map different subscribers to different channels) for 1.8gbps of total downstream bandwidth. Easily enough to offer everyone plenty of download speed. However the same node would only have 4 upstream channels on a normal split, or 8 max if they'd spent the non-trivial amount of money to increase the split. That is 108mbps for 4 or 216mbps for 8 (upstream channels get less bandwidth because of the way cable modems work). You can see why they have to be stingy. There's just not a lot available, and it isn't easy to expand.

Now DOCSIS 3.1 Full Duplex will solve this issue. It allows the entire spectrum to be used for upstream and downstream at the same time, and allows for high speeds, up to 10gbps. Thus they'll have plenty of bandwidth upstream and be able to offer symmetric connections. However it is a brand new standard, I'm not aware of any equipment that supports it yet, so it'll be time for the gear to be developed, and then to be deployed.
 
viper1152012 said:
My brother is a great example, he works from home editing commercials and only goes to the office when its required.
He saves gas, and wear and tear on his car, hours a week in traffic, avoiding tolls and you know how?

1gigabit connection up/down.
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But does he need it, though. /s
 
pcgeekesq said:
This is irrelevant.

If the best reasons people can offer for disagreeing with the Feds defining "broadband" as 25+Mbps is "ISPs are greedy," "I can't download my games fast enough," and "I need to stream four HD [pron] channels at once," then there is no legitimate reason to disagree with the FCC's decision.

And three years ago, when the FCC adopted the 25Mbps criteria, most of the losers disagreeing with it now didn't. Like so much of the whining that goes on today, the true 'reasoning' of these losers is "I have a borderline-psychotic hatred of Donald Trump and therefore everything he and his appointees do is wrong."
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I appreciate you cherry picking my post (/s). My second point was relevant to the first, in that the profits they're making aren't going into their infrastructure and/or innovation, which in a competitive market is what would happen. We'd be well past a 25Mbps if the broadband in any way competitive.

Telecommuting, File transferring, conference calls, etc. all benefit from having a good, fast reliable connection, so please stop straw manning your porn/games argument.
 
pcgeekesq said:
You want government policy to be determined by your compulsive desire to download games quickly.
Not meaning to be rude, but: go to hell.
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lol that is not what I meant at all.

And guess what i'm in Canada so what the FCC does has no affect on me.

I just know internet in the US is terrible because of lack of competition, and government assisted monopoly's.
 
Stoicz said:
I appreciate you cherry picking my post (/s). My second point was relevant to the first, in that the profits they're making aren't going into their infrastructure and/or innovation, which in a competitive market is what would happen. We'd be well past a 25Mbps if the broadband in any way competitive.

Telecommuting, File transferring, conference calls, etc. all benefit from having a good, fast reliable connection, so please stop straw manning your porn/games argument.
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All for businesses: Telecommuting (i don;t think anyone does on-the-fly video editing in a rural location) , File transferring, conference calls, etc. (they can get multiple lines , if it comes to that they are located in some rural location)

When talking about basic internet, we are talking about residential and leisure use.
 
daglesj said:
30 Down/10 Up as an average.

Up speed was killing us at home when were stuck on 1Mbps. Now we have 20Mbps up and it makes a big difference.
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I'd like to see at least a 4 to 1 ratio ideally on upload speeds in the future for broadband. That would help gamers and game developers a lot along with streamers and music artists and other odd ball use cases a fair bit.

theBrownLlama said:
25 Mbps coverage across America is MUCH more sensible than 100Mbps in select cities.
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I mostly agree with this though you've got time to deploy, cost to deploy, and amount of local new subscribers to consider. The cities have more people thus more subscribes and it's quicker and cheaper to deploy over shorter distances. It really sucks for rural area's, but that is just the reality. They do on the other hand have worse congestion during peak usage hours. The FCC should just have different standard requirements based upon the general area's population size as it would be the most realistic solution. Reality is everyone having fiber in rural America isn't exactly practical from a cost standpoint of a business.
 
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Vaulter98c said:
Funny, normally you people would be screaming to get the government out of IT but in this thread it seems everyone is ok with the Gov forcing companies to operate a certain way (which still isn't what this story is about anyways)
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I find that duality pretty interesting as well. It seems to me, that people are not actually against big government but when the goverment interveens against their interests, it's all fine and dandy until they think it is in their interest. In other words the hypocrisy is so thick you can cut it.
 
trick0502 said:
I’m getting 1gbps installed on Monday. How long would it take to download a 40gb game on a 25mbps connection?
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Fucking forever.

I have 30/3, best I can get is 50/5.

what really pisses me off is Spectrum crowing about "100 mbps minimum speed! for all new accounts!" Upgrade our crap lines and make it retroactive assholes.
 
tetris42 said:
I don't have much faith they won't be replaced by new clowns.
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To paraphrase an old saying, "It's Clowns all the way down!"

can't replace Clowns when all that's waiting to replace them is yet more clowns.... forever.
 
GotNoRice said:
Data caps are the bigger issue. I would rather have 25Mbps with no caps than 100Mbps with a cap. Everything will always finish downloading eventually...
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I agree that data caps are the biggest issue. I average 2-3TB a month, not doing anything out of the ordinary, so 1TB just wasn't cutting.
socK said:
It's $80~ for Gigabit here - no data cap.

There's no shortage of (amusingly red, more often than not) areas in the country with law makers blatantly taking 14 inches of telco dick. Why should it be so comically difficult to join the fray? If Google has trouble, the rest of mere mortals stand no chance.
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This. I loved living in an area with actual competition when I was going to university: Getting actual advertised speeds and more, great latency, and uninterrupted service. Now I'm living in an area with a government-sponsored regional monopoly and Comcast just does what it pleases.
Jehuty said:
I mean, this is specifically what the guy was brought in for. To fuck everything up. The President wants to make sure that when he leaves it will be a massive pile of flaming shit for the next administration.

Dude’s just doing what he was asked to do.
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Well, Ajit Pai was an Obama appointee, so...
 
Armenius said:
Well, Ajit Pai was an Obama appointee, so...
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He was recommended by the Repubs, more specifically Repub Senator Mitch McConnell (note that the Senate has to approve all appointments otherwise they do go through), though and the Repubs, or Dems, are always guaranteed at least 2 seats on the FCC board.

Prior to his FCC appointment Pai worked for Brownback (another Repub, then Gov of Kansas) and where he gained notoriety for being a shameless stooge which is probably why noted shit heel McConnell "recommended" him.

Trump made Pai the FCC chairman though, who sets the tone for the board which is already majority Repub, so he does indeed get to take the blame here for appointing such a turd for the office.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
lol that is not what I meant at all.

And guess what i'm in Canada so what the FCC does has no affect on me.

I just know internet in the US is terrible because of lack of competition, and government assisted monopoly's.
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If you are in Canada how do you know the "internet in the US is terrible". I worked 8 years at a tier 2 ISP with thousands of business customers. It is laughable what ignorant end users on here are demanding as the "norm" when we would laugh at customers utilization even though they demanded a high cap circuit. Secondly the ignorant end users one here have little to no idea the investment it takes at the carrier level to support your Gig connection. Everyone make's fun of the infamous set of tubes quote, but that is the base level understanding many are showing on here as if what comes out at your single demarc at your laundry closet is simply nothing more than plugging in a higher gauge extension cord behind the wall or something.
 
viper1152012 said:
Too many people telling me what I NEED.

When games are breaking 80gb in size I NEED faster bandwidth.

I am not content with waiting several hours and putting my house on standstill while it downloads.

When Comcast sees it fit they MAGICALLY increase to 1gigabit speeds so dont give me the horse crap about what they CAN and CANT do.

Google was going to move into portland Oregon and over night Comcast went from 100mb or 125 with blast+ to 1000....... Its just a lack of competition and a lot of people settling for the crap speeds and service they get.
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No one is telling you what you need, some people are just saying that if you live in rural-bumfuck takes two hours to get to a store I want to live a homesteader life- part of the country and some company gets money to run "broadband" to said rural area then this is the floor of what speeds they can offer, and get whatever federal funding for "broadband".

Yes I agree competition makes shit happen, Google has fiber... although ironically not in the general area that the GooglePlex is located (unless you're super close), Sonic.net has fiber (but they don't have Google level of money so they're rolling out VEEEEERY slow) and hey look I can get 250Mbps through Comcast, possibly faster but 250Mbps is still reasonably affordable for a home user who really does "need" the speed. But all of that, has nothing to do with what the FCC definition of "broadband" is.
 
The people on this board are not really representative of the average American consumer. I have 25/10 service and it is perfectly adequate for my needs. I could buy more if I needed it, but I don't for just my wife and myself. Many of my neighbors with children have the same level of service. Hell, most people couldn't get the most out of even 100M service since everything they have is on WiFi and their routers are older. Even with newer routers, the RF congestion in high density cities is terrible and severely limits bandwidth. So the reality is that this decision won't have any effect on the real world; some people just want to have a reason to rage more against Pai.
 
PaulP said:
The people on this board are not really representative of the average American consumer. I have 25/10 service and it is perfectly adequate for my needs. I could buy more if I needed it, but I don't for just my wife and myself. Many of my neighbors with children have the same level of service. Hell, most people couldn't get the most out of even 100M service since everything they have is on WiFi and their routers are older. Even with newer routers, the RF congestion in high density cities is terrible and severely limits bandwidth. So the reality is that this decision won't have any effect on the real world; some people just want to have a reason to rage more against Pai.
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I'm in a town of 30k, and benchmarking between my 2 802.11n 5ghz access points I can sustain about 170mbit/s real throughput.
 
Just couldn't help but think of this during the conversation

The_NFS_Video_cover.jpg
 
I have to wonder if the people proposing this have ever lived in a truly rural area.

The cost to upgrade the infrastructure in an area with less than 1 residence every 5 miles is staggering. And while I can definitely get behind saying "Fuck the Exec's that are being paid millions of dollars", the truth is that even yanking their salaries to pay for it won't get the upgrade done. While fiber is cheap (relatively), it still takes manhours and equipment to drop new fiber, so much so, that the infrastructure upgrades in terms of equipment at either end of the run is negligible in contrast.

Consider the cost of having 100mb internet to every residence in MT, ND, SD, and WY. Billions of dollars.
 
prne10 said:
Y'all love government meddling
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I'd rather they didn't tell me how many steps a ladder should have or whether or not I have to wear a seatbelt but this is one case where the Free Market isn't policing itself. It's not reasonable to have monopolistic ISP's in cahoots with local governments to deny competitive access while charging $100 and up per month for less speed and reliability than the average South Korean.
 
jwalk6 said:
I'd rather they didn't tell me how many steps a ladder should have or whether or not I have to wear a seatbelt but this is one case where the Free Market isn't policing itself. It's not reasonable to have monopolistic ISP's in cahoots with local governments to deny competitive access while charging $100 and up per month for less speed and reliability than the average South Korean.
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Free Market in cahoots. What?
 
motomonkey said:
Fucking forever.

I have 30/3, best I can get is 50/5.

what really pisses me off is Spectrum crowing about "100 mbps minimum speed! for all new accounts!" Upgrade our crap lines and make it retroactive assholes.
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This type of behavior I can defiantly agree upon base speed connections for plans should be retroactive for everyone regardless of them being new or old users in fact existing customers if anything should reap the benefits of a better connection increase if anything. They have it backwards to lure in new customers while kind of shafting existing ones from receiving the same speeds are they offer new ones so you have to call them up and negotiate over again every so many years.

jwalk6 said:
I'd rather they didn't tell me how many steps a ladder should have or whether or not I have to wear a seatbelt but this is one case where the Free Market isn't policing itself. It's not reasonable to have monopolistic ISP's in cahoots with local governments to deny competitive access while charging $100 and up per month for less speed and reliability than the average South Korean.
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This quote might be fairly applicable in California and NY perhaps, but most other area's not so much the population density in the US is nothing like Asian. It's a lot more affordable when there is more people pitching in to pay for it.

The problem some people don't get is sending a rocket to space is one thing that's trivial enough, but sending every person on the planet into space is a whole different scenario and unrealistic. If you want internet speeds like Japan for example you better expect a much more crowded living environment everywhere you go from where you live to where you work to where you shop or hang out. Now if you want those speeds w/o that you better expect to pay a premium for that luxury because it isn't free or easy to provide. Another way of looking at it is this trying to put out a fire with buckets of water and a fixed amount of people carrying them becomes increasingly harder the further away from the water source the fire is located. That's why internet speeds vary and in the cities tend to be much higher, but they are also more congested if everyone is all heavily using them at once on the other hand.
 
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knowom said:
This type of behavior I can defiantly agree upon base speed connections for plans should be retroactive for everyone regardless of them being new or old users in fact existing customers if anything should reap the benefits of a better connection increase if anything. They have it backwards to lure in new customers while kind of shafting existing ones from receiving the same speeds are they offer new ones so you have to call them up and negotiate over again every so many years.

This quote might be fairly applicable in California and NY perhaps, but most other area's not so much the population density in the US is nothing like Asian. It's a lot more affordable when there is more people pitching in to pay for it.

The problem some people don't get is sending a rocket to space is one thing that's trivial enough, but sending every person on the planet into space is a whole different scenario and unrealistic. If you want internet speeds like Japan for example you better expect a much more crowded living environment everywhere you go from where you live to where you work to where you shop or hang out. Now if you want those speeds w/o that you better expect to pay a premium for that luxury because it isn't free or easy to provide. Another way of looking at it is this trying to put out a fire with buckets of water and a fixed amount of people carrying them becomes increasingly harder the further away from the water source the fire is located. That's why internet speeds vary and in the cities tend to be much higher, but they are also more congested if everyone is all heavily using them at once on the other hand.
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If this were true, densely populated areas in the US would have similar speeds to densely populated areas in Japan. This is another bullshit excuse from useless American corporations.

Thats not what this is about, however. ISPs are against raising the definition of broadband to 100mbps because it will prevent them from stealing money from US taxpayers.

The federal government sets aside tax revenue from taxes on broadband, telecommunications, cellular, and TV subscriptions for the development of broadband in underserved areas. Having broadband defined at such a low speed allows ISPs to get reimbursed by the feds for buying 3G cell sites from their competitors, or pulling some junk DSL equipment out of storage and deploying it in the middle of nowhere. No one should be in favor of this. Having broadband defined at 100mbps or higher means the ISP will only get reimbursed if they deploy new (DOCSIS3+, VDSL2+, or fiber) technologies that are going to last.
 
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wizdum said:
If this were true, densely populated areas in the US would have similar speeds to densely populated areas in Japan. This is another bullshit excuse from useless American corporations.
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It does. Have a look at Speedtest's most recent data. The US is actually ahead of Japan for fixed (wired) broadband. In plenty of US urban areas, Gigabit is on sale. I could have it, if I wanted, but really 300mbit does me fine.

The thing you might get thrown off by in Japan is that it is not uncommon for large apartment buildings to sell "gigabit" Internet for cheap to their residents. Thing is, it isn't really gig. It is gig Ethernet to your unit, but the backhaul isn't there to deliver a gig to all the units reliably. So it ends up working like an office or university campus where you have a gig link, but speeds are a couple hundred megs at best in reality.

I'm not trying to say the situation with US Internet is great, it isn't, there's lots of issues one of the biggest being many markets are effectively single player. However acting like the US only has garbage speeds is silly. That really only tends to be true in more rural areas. In most urban areas, the cable company can and will provide fast speeds, increasingly including a gig.
 
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I'm all for faster internets but if this about terminology then yes I have to agree that 25mbps is enough to be called a "broadband" for single person, provided you actually get that speed as advertised. IMHO, streaming movies is a good metric for everyday joes and janes and you can watch 4K movie stutter free with that speed. If you want faster download speeds or you have multiple people hogging your bandwidth, you need to buy better "broadband" service. But because you have higher needs doesn't mean that the baseline must be raised to match your needs. Don't be greedy guys.
 
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Bandwidth schmandwidth. Gimme low latency on a 5/5 line instead of huge TCP windows on a fat pipe all day any day. I sit on an uncapped , supposedly unshaped 100/50 fibre line and I'm ecstatic when I get a 100ms hop out of my ISP's directly upstream equipment.

Why? Because the fucking rotten cunts squeeze every microcent out of their backbone lease by combining my packets into huge lard arse fucking monstrosities that wait at the gate until TTL.

CUNTS!!!
 
Azphira said:
That reminds me, I need to call my isp and see if they can give me a deal going from 300Mbps to 500Mbps, I'd go 1000Mbps, but then I'd have to buy a new modem. Hmmm, I wonder if they pro rate 960Mbps.
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Sounds like me and comcast.
 
25/3....thats a brilliant baseline to aim for I think
there will always be faster connections available to some people. Geography plays a part in that
Less dense areas means less money for telcos. They are a business after all (Although in the US they sound like right coconuts)
But if the base 25mb was pushed for every area in the US it would be great for your country
Because if they are forced to invest in the infrastructure to get the minimum up to that speed, then whatever they put in, will be able to handle greater speeds further down the line.
 
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Jahx said:
I have to wonder if the people proposing this have ever lived in a truly rural area.

The cost to upgrade the infrastructure in an area with less than 1 residence every 5 miles is staggering. And while I can definitely get behind saying "Fuck the Exec's that are being paid millions of dollars", the truth is that even yanking their salaries to pay for it won't get the upgrade done. While fiber is cheap (relatively), it still takes manhours and equipment to drop new fiber, so much so, that the infrastructure upgrades in terms of equipment at either end of the run is negligible in contrast.

Consider the cost of having 100mb internet to every residence in MT, ND, SD, and WY. Billions of dollars.
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It's not the hours that cost a lot of money, it's the endless fuckery with each municipality for the right of way you have to pay for. The biggest impediment to any improvement is local government.:mad:
 
Like with most things, none of this is simple.

1. To those going "muh government meddling," do you like weekends? How about having Christmas Day or the 4th of July off? Those are the result of "government meddling" and establishing a minimum standard.

2. I'm all for free market and genuine competition (see what Ryzen did to CPU prices). But in order for the free market to work, there has to be genuine competition. Most people in the United States are lucky if they have the choice of more than one ISP. ISPs are literally granted monopolies, at which point their whining about having to invest in infrastructure gets little sympathy from me. We already pay proportionately more for internet than most other modern, Western nations, and the only time prices drop is when the GOP can't block Google Fiber or something equivalent and they come in and provide a meaningful alternative.

3. Free markets, unfortunately, consolidate without regulation and supervision. Larger companies buy up their competitors until you're effectively left with a monopoly and price fixing (see Luxotica and sunglasses). Thus, I'd argue there's a role for government in encouraging and enforcing competition.

Here's the thing: Do we let World Cup players "police" themselves? How about the Super Bowl? Hell no. We have dedicated referees. Why? Because we know that when that kind of money and success is on the line, people will take every opportunity to cheat if it means winning. Why do libertarians seem to think corporations are magically more ethical, especially when we're talking billion dollar industries, when historical precedent shows consistently the opposite?

Obviously, humans are prone to error and refs make mistakes. But to claim they should be thrown out completely is bizarre and hyperbolic.
 
Hatriot said:
If you are in Canada how do you know the "internet in the US is terrible". I worked 8 years at a tier 2 ISP with thousands of business customers. It is laughable what ignorant end users on here are demanding as the "norm" when we would laugh at customers utilization even though they demanded a high cap circuit.
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You don't have to use it 24/7, most of the time, or even often, to have use for higher speeds.

Secondly the ignorant end users one here have little to no idea the investment it takes at the carrier level to support your Gig connection. Everyone make's fun of the infamous set of tubes quote, but that is the base level understanding many are showing on here as if what comes out at your single demarc at your laundry closet is simply nothing more than plugging in a higher gauge extension cord behind the wall or something.
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Which is it, the utilization is laughably low or it's hard to provide high speeds?
 
TheOne&OnlyZeke said:
25/3....thats a brilliant baseline to aim for I think
there will always be faster connections available to some people. Geography plays a part in that
Less dense areas means less money for telcos. They are a business after all (Although in the US they sound like right coconuts)
But if the base 25mb was pushed for every area in the US it would be great for your country
Because if they are forced to invest in the infrastructure to get the minimum up to that speed, then whatever they put in, will be able to handle greater speeds further down the line.
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Again, 25/3 isn't the baseline for available speed, its the baseline for receiving government subsidy money.

Personally, I'd rather save my tax dollars for actual infrastructure improvements, not lining the pockets of private companies to provide "baseline" service.
 
Hatriot said:
If you are in Canada how do you know the "internet in the US is terrible"
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Really dude.

So because I live in canada I don't know or have any american friends or family there that I go to visit.

Not to mention i'm a member of www.dslreports.com since like 2001. That forums is full of american's complaining about the internet.

I agree with the rest of your post though.
 
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