Microsoft Criticizes FCC Broadband Report

AlphaAtlas

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According to a recently spotted FCC report, Microsoft thinks that the government is a little generous when it comes to their analysis of broadband availability. Based on their own analysis, some areas that supposedly have access to speeds of over 25 Mbps really don't have much access at all, and they suggest that the FCC should draw on a "broader array of data" in the future. Microsoft told MediaPost "This draft report simply doesn't reflect the state of things on the ground," and that "The agency is badly in need of better data and a more honest assessment of the state of broadband deployment."

"In some areas the Commission's broadband availability data suggests that Internet service providers ... have reported significant broadband availability (25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up) while Microsoft's usage data indicates that only a small percentage of consumers actually access the Internet at broadband speeds in those areas..." Microsoft weighed in with its concerns several days after advocacy group Free Press said the draft report was partially based on faulty data provided by the internet service provider BarrierFree. That company erroneously reported in a December 2017 filing that it offered fiber-to-the-home and fixed wireless service at speeds of nearly 1 GB to Census blocks containing almost 62 million people, according to Free Press. The incorrect information resulted in "a massive over-statement of the change in broadband deployment at the national level during 2017," Free Press told the FCC.
 
Im near a major city in georgia and at&t is the only provider of my town i am lucky I live 1000 feet from the exchange and can get 25/3 alot of people here stuck on 6/1 or 3/.5..........but I pay as much or more for 25/3 than people 10 miles away pay for cable and fiber 50/50 or 100/100.
 
I live in a small city (32k people) and my choices are comcast up to 2Gbit/s OR AT&T up to 12mbit/s

2000 vs 12.

How many megabits should I chose?
 
I hit the house internet jackpot, I'm in an annexed area of the city near Austin because it changed city hands theres no monopoly collusion.
I have access to suddenlink up to 1gb, spectrum up to 1gb, grande up to 1gb, and att up to 100mb (which supposedly is bringing gigapower to the area soon).
 
I hit the house internet jackpot, I'm in an annexed area of the city near Austin because it changed city hands theres no monopoly collusion.
I have access to suddenlink up to 1gb, spectrum up to 1gb, grande up to 1gb, and att up to 100mb (which supposedly is bringing gigapower to the area soon).
Can I get a 1Gbit point-to-point link to you from Illinois ? :)
 
Which provider you want? I'm on spectrum atm, but I seem to have to switch between them every year because they don't realize my threats to go to just switch providers actually have viable speeds between them.
I usually go for the 400 package, but grande just sent me a deal for $70 for 12 mo of 1gig, so considering making the jump again.
 
I live in a small city (32k people) and my choices are comcast up to 2Gbit/s OR AT&T up to 12mbit/s

2000 vs 12.

How many megabits should I chose?

I don't need the speed, so if they sold the 12mb/s at $12/month, I'd jump on it.
 
I don't need the speed, so if they sold the 12mb/s at $12/month, I'd jump on it.
How in the F%^K can you use the modern web with 12Mbps? I mean you can barely stream a 240p YT video at that speed. Forget about downloading anything. My parents have 25Mbps and even that is insanely slow. I am moving to 500Mbit from 100 when I move next month since 4K eats a lot of bandwidth and those UHD Linux Distros will not DL themselves ;-)...
 
How in the F%^K can you use the modern web with 12Mbps? I mean you can barely stream a 240p YT video at that speed. Forget about downloading anything. My parents have 25Mbps and even that is insanely slow. I am moving to 500Mbit from 100 when I move next month since 4K eats a lot of bandwidth and those UHD Linux Distros will not DL themselves ;-)...

Realistic expectations. Rural location, 12Mbs DSL max offered. Just have to accept that streaming, especially HD streaming is not probably going to happen. Gaming and normal browsing work fine. Lots of firewall rules, no-script and ad-block help. Don't imagine that trying to watch a stream while gaming would work out well. Wound up with a satellite TV provider. Any DVR solution that isn't local storage doesn't help. Large downloads become a good time to get non-computer tasks done.
 
Centurylink has a pretty sweet deal here. $65 a month for 100/100mbit. It's pre-paid so they will cut you off if payment is missed, but you can put it on a credit card for renewal. Oh, it's also considered business class so no data caps.
 
You might as well ask the FCC to start using smaller novelty mugs than use accurate data to determine broadband capability. It’s got a better chance at being considered.
 
I remember back in the early to mid 2000's I had bonded 56k..... because that was the best available in my city..... then we moved out to the country and got a wopping 26.4k (because it just wouldn't connect at 56k) then I joined the army...ended up out here in Colorado near fort carson, cable offered 25mbps...centurylink dsl...12...…. fast forward a few years..... cable now offers 250mbps...….centurylink IN MY AREA...still 12mbps...though it never got close to 12mbps..... needless to say after I got out, I just went with a business plan with comcast....
 
I don't need the speed, so if they sold the 12mb/s at $12/month, I'd jump on it.

Do you know how long it takes to download 100GB+ games on 12Mbit/s ? On top of that latency is going to be much worse and that 12mbit is "up to". Now imagine wife is watching 4k netflix & my son is watching youtube while I'm trying to download a game...

Instead I have comcast business (no caps) with 150Mbit down, 20 up, but I pay $150/month for it :(

Life is too short to be stuck at 12Mbit/s if there are other options available.
 
Realistic expectations. Rural location, 12Mbs DSL max offered. Just have to accept that streaming, especially HD streaming is not probably going to happen. Gaming and normal browsing work fine. Lots of firewall rules, no-script and ad-block help. Don't imagine that trying to watch a stream while gaming would work out well. Wound up with a satellite TV provider. Any DVR solution that isn't local storage doesn't help. Large downloads become a good time to get non-computer tasks done.
That story made my geeky inner child cry.
 
I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I work for a rural ISP in East Texas and I can tell you that people there are gettin nowhere NEAR 25mb and the providers that 'advertise' 25mb are full of CRAP

also live in east texas. with century link i get 25 mb go into city limits some places struggle to get 3mb.
 
I had that in the late 90s it was finicky as hell and if you picked up the phone to make a call it often had to be restarted to get back to 128k.
I didn't have that issue, but I had Centrex...

My latency was about 12ms.. I can't tell you how many walls I ran into playing quake (1) after moving from 150-200ms latency on a dial-up modem.

On the modem you's "slide" around corners. You got so used to it you didn't notice it. With 12ms latency I kept changing direction too early & ended up face first in walls. :ROFLMAO:
 
I hit the house internet jackpot, I'm in an annexed area of the city near Austin because it changed city hands theres no monopoly collusion.
I have access to suddenlink up to 1gb, spectrum up to 1gb, grande up to 1gb, and att up to 100mb (which supposedly is bringing gigapower to the area soon).

What are the respective prices?
 
What are the respective prices?
I bought in 2014 when the market was just starting to rise and got a 2k sq ft 4br/2.5bth for 171k, its now valued at about 230kish due to Austin prices on the rise, I reappraised in 2016 to knock PMI off my mortgage and it valued at 215k.
The general area is average of $115-$120/sq ft. schools are so-so in elementray/mid, HS is pretty low, if you're familiar with the area it was originally Round Rock but was annexed by Pflugerville.
So my mail is delivered by Round Rock post offices, but I have Pflugerville city trash, Atmos gas, choose my own electric, a 3rd party non-city water provider (southwest water), and then my multitude of internet providers.

Its all kinda silly, but I sure don't mind.
 
I used to live in a rural area that was about 45 minutes from what a lot of people would call civilization. I punched in my old address - no DSL or anything. Dial up still (!). One of the reasons I had to move.
 
How in the F%^K can you use the modern web with 12Mbps

I manage with 4/1 (more like usable speeds of 1mb/512kb) lol

I'm 12k feet from the nearest station though, was told if I was 1,000 feet closer I could get 10/2 :/
 
Honestly I'm surprised the FCC doesn't just say "Everyone has access to Broadband!!!" since satellite providers (all both of them...) are able to sell up to 100Mbps packages.... so long as you don't mind 2000ms latency and a data cap of about 500MB.

I had 3/3 radio for a long time (10 years). It was flakey to start out with but kept with it and they did improve reliabilty.

Have 12/1 DSL now, it's a lot less reliable than my radio link was... when it's able to run it's noticeably faster (occasionally I can get Netflix in 480p!), but I wouldn't call it great.

Just have to plan digital purchases -- Windows Update or a new digital purchase via Steam or PS Store, and the entire internet is choked out until those are done downloading. A new game that comes in around 50GB takes all weekend...

We have 25/25 Comcast at work - small office. Mostly just email traffic there though... nothing massive.

I don't even know what gigabit would look like.
 
How in the F%^K can you use the modern web with 12Mbps? I mean you can barely stream a 240p YT video at that speed. Forget about downloading anything. My parents have 25Mbps and even that is insanely slow. I am moving to 500Mbit from 100 when I move next month since 4K eats a lot of bandwidth and those UHD Linux Distros will not DL themselves ;-)...
20mbps works fine for me. If I have to download something big, it either happens while I'm out or sleeping or in the background while I play something else. I don't need it now, though it'd be nice. Edit: before I switched to the next best deal, I was putting along at 6mbps on dsl. That was fine until my modem started acting up.
 
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Which provider you want? I'm on spectrum atm, but I seem to have to switch between them every year because they don't realize my threats to go to just switch providers actually have viable speeds between them.
I usually go for the 400 package, but grande just sent me a deal for $70 for 12 mo of 1gig, so considering making the jump again.


That's what we need, more competition.

Where I live, middle of a large city, I have 1 choice, cable. Their price for 60/5 is higher than your deal for 1gig.
 
I live in a small city (32k people) and my choices are comcast up to 2Gbit/s OR AT&T up to 12mbit/s

2000 vs 12.

How many megabits should I chose?

That is the rub in a lot of areas: There is higher speed, and there is, technically, competition but not really because the phone companies are shit and refuse to upgrade their century old infrastructure. Same kind of deal where I live. Cox has packages from 12mbit to 1gbit and you really get the speeds they market, barring random issues. Century Link continually advertises that you can get "up to" 40mbps... but when you check actually they can deliver 3-5 max depending on your address. So when you get down to it there really is only one option available. If CL was smart they'd bite the bullet and roll out FTTH which would be expensive, but then again would be infrastructure that would last another 100 years or more and let them compete. Instead they keep trying to act like it is 2000 and people would still be happy about a couple mbits and wonder why Cox steals all their customers. Cox then, unsurprisingly, keeps raising rates because what else are you going to go with?
 
At this point them complaining about this is almost like complaining today that the iPhone 4 was limited compared to the current release. This is already a known issue, they already came up with new rules that should help and actually have a meeting tomorrow in DC that will be broadcast for ISPs to watch that will discuss the new mapping regulations.

The current ones that are not very good for either side. Every year you fill out a form based on a censis track. How many customers are serviced by fiber? copper? fixed wireless? coax? List all the packages that you offer to a single location in that track. So if you put in fiber to 1 business and give them 10Gbps on the very edge. That means you offer 10Gbps fiber to that entire area, even if the area might be a 5x5 mile grid. So when the government hands out money to rural carriers to upgrade stuff, you don't need money to reach that house way out there as you already said you offer 10Gbps fiber to these people. They have about 3 or 4 different ways that they might break this down to be more detailed. Which is a pain for reporting for gives a better map of what speeds are offered.

So at this point this is a know issue, has been a known issue for years and they are already working on solutions.
 
LOL.

The FCC definition might as well be if a single resident in a zip code can purchase 25Mbps, than the whole zip is broadband!

I suspect MS cares, at least somewhat, because they want to sell a game streaming service. Plus, Office online and others.
 
LOL.

The FCC definition might as well be if a single resident in a zip code can purchase 25Mbps, than the whole zip is broadband!

I suspect MS cares, at least somewhat, because they want to sell a game streaming service. Plus, Office online and others.
Yeah, hard to assess a market when the data is flawed or manipulated, and hard to sell a product when your customers won't be able to enjoy it because of circumstances outside of their (MS, in this case) control.
 
The FCC is effectively captured by the industry. Their master plan is to let wired infrastructure crumble and switch you all to 5G wireless and use the fact that the air is a shared medium to justify datacapping you at some unreasonably low level so they can make huge money from business with large data needs and overage fees on consumers.

There are a lot of true left/right issues, but internet access is definitely a utility and we’re definitely going to take it up the ass without regulation. Anyone who claims it’s a free market is crazy.
 
The FCC is effectively captured by the industry. Their master plan is to let wired infrastructure crumble and switch you all to 5G wireless and use the fact that the air is a shared medium to justify datacapping you at some unreasonably low level so they can make huge money from business with large data needs and overage fees on consumers.

There are a lot of true left/right issues, but internet access is definitely a utility and we’re definitely going to take it up the ass without regulation. Anyone who claims it’s a free market is crazy.

The problem is not that you or other people know it the problem is that nothing has been done about it. There are prolly 3rd world countries that have better internet. The numbers I see on these threads about how fast the basic connections are scary so low they are about the same as what I had some 15-20 years ago.

And it comes down to the same problem ISP never want to make any head way on laying infrastructure not even when they get paid (FCC, Congress) to do so.

And the only time you hear about those same ISP is when they taken over another company for billions of dollars.
 
Well Microsoft would be one of the best companies to dispute this considering they will be collecting data from the windows os at ground level, rather than the ISP making up statistics.

I'm interested in the disparity of data used per customer in regards to what they claim you are using and what is actually the case and how many instances have been presented that the figures are never matching.
 
LOL.

The FCC definition might as well be if a single resident in a zip code can purchase 25Mbps, than the whole zip is broadband!

I suspect MS cares, at least somewhat, because they want to sell a game streaming service. Plus, Office online and others.

Sadly that isn't really off much from how it is. One of the suggestions that the FCC wants to start testing is having ISPs report based on address. Talking about this with our controller at lunch. That would be a pain in the ass for us as a provider to know for the purpose of reporting by running something from our billing platform the exact speed per address. However from the consumer side it would be great as then it does paint a perfect picture of what is currently out there. So one side of our brain thinks it is great and the other side thinks it is going to be a nightmare to report on.

That said that is just one idea being passed around.
 
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