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

Kelby said:
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.
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This man is NOT a true conservative. He's a Democrat in Republican clothing. He's a RINO. Don't insult the conservative movement by associating him with the name. Conservatives are about freeing business from government and allowing the free market to correct such things. This man is totally against that.
 
Republicans and democrats need to stop living in denial and hold politicians accountable even if in your party. Both sides act like kids " you can point at us because the last so and so did this" or... Anytime a republican sucks they are a RINO and its not an issue or if a democrat goes off the deep end they are somehow not at fault. Both sides andany followers are insane to talk to these days with the kiddish mentality of short sightedness.
 
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As if most of us can do anything about politicians in other districts. I'd love to boot many Republican politicians, but they are in other districts, so I would have no power to do anything about it. I do, however, write many letters to the politicians that are from my district and state, and let them know, many times per year, that we are watching, and they need to stick to the right path of less government, less spending, and less taxes.
 
Cobra said:
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?).
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Wrong.

They don't do it because of the lack of competition. Why would you install fiber when your customers will still be your customers? You won't spend hundreds of millions so that you can increase the fees by $10 a month. You do it when you want to grab as many users as possible. You need competition for it to work.

Heck, in the 500km^2 island I live we have 2 providers that installed fiber pretty much anywhere that you have houses next to each other. On top of that, we already had like half a dozen providers offering copper up to 30mbps. Now I have unlimited 300/300. Well, to be honest limited home plans simply do not exist unless you are using radio (it isn't radio, obviously, but since you need a dish that you aim at the local provider we call it that) or satellite-based wireless internet. Those are limited (in the cheapest tiers). But every land-based option isn't. I don't think it makes any sense to have 300/300 and have limits on your line.
 
The point is taken out of context.....not surprisingly.

“Today, ultrafast residential service is a novelty and good for marketing, but the tiny percentage of people using it cannot drive our policy decisions."
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LTkSBJq.jpg


What he is saying is that YES, these technologies exist......BUT.....we can't say "ok, this is the minimum by which the ENTIRE country should be judged by".

Seriously guys.....there are over 300 million people in this country and we are the 3rd largest country in the world. Just because you live in fucking Silicon Valley or New York or even Dallas doesn't mean that your lifestyle is what the entire rest of the country is living.

Fear mongering as usual from the trusted media.

If there's something that does get overlooked in the hype surrounding faster speeds, it's the fact that the United States still pays more for broadband service than a laundry list of developing nations, something the industry -- and O'Rielly -- also don't want highlighted in FCC policy discussions moving forward.
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I mean come on.......WTF are the editors doing at these publications? Do they even have editors? Maybe her next article will be about how much more we pay for a McRib at McDonalds than the North Koreans.
 
prava said:
Wrong.

They don't do it because of the lack of competition. Why would you install fiber when your customers will still be your customers? You won't spend hundreds of millions so that you can increase the fees by $10 a month. You do it when you want to grab as many users as possible. You need competition for it to work.

Heck, in the 500km^2 island I live we have 2 providers that installed fiber pretty much anywhere that you have houses next to each other. On top of that, we already had like half a dozen providers offering copper up to 30mbps. Now I have unlimited 300/300. Well, to be honest limited home plans simply do not exist unless you are using radio (it isn't radio, obviously, but since you need a dish that you aim at the local provider we call it that) or satellite-based wireless internet. Those are limited (in the cheapest tiers). But every land-based option isn't. I don't think it makes any sense to have 300/300 and have limits on your line.
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Population density of this island?
 
Think of it this way:

IF the government is going to treat "high speed" internet as a utility, what defines it as such? Surely, watching super HD shows does not qualify as a basic service, nor does downloading huge DLC texture packs for a game. What is your definition of a basic need or service? Pretty much any government buereaucrat will define it a minimally as possible, and then the companies providing will only provide what is required at reasonable rates, and say hello to sky-high prices for more data and bandwidth.
 
USA! USA! WINNING!

The USA used to be at the forefront of technology and innovation. We used to want to be the best country in the world. Germany used to be the best (physics, chemistry, etc.).

We need to get back to being the best. Not accepting mediocre as "good enough" and anything better as a novelty. Fuck this guy. We're the country that went to the fucking MOON! That was probably a novelty, too. It was only a big rock...
 
What I think is more important than ultrafast internet standards are basic broadband standards + affordability. 20 years ago all $20 got you dial-up. AIN'T A DAMN THING CHANGED. You should be able to get affordable entry-level broadband for cheap. There's not an excuse for this, it's already the case in Europe, which have pricing schemes many Americans would drool at. Additionally, coverage shouldn't be as piss poor as it is. There are many, MANY areas out in the country where all you can get is either dial-up or satellite. How about focusing on getting the country online at prices they can't before worrying about faster speeds.
 
To play devil's advocate for a minute... Depending on what is meant by "Ultra fast broadband" Isn't it really a novelty for the vast majority of internet users?

To users that only connect Wifi Devices, Anything over 700mb is wasted. That's about the best one can get from a good solid AC wifi connection. Anything over 120mb is wasted for N, and 30ish for G.

If users are only doing email, surfing and streaming video from services like Amazon or Netflix (ie your average internet user) a 25mb pipe will cover several users comfortably.

Unless a household is downloading very large files all the time, or sharing the connection with a dozen or more users, a gigabit connection (or similar speed) is really more about bragging rights than need.
 
0neTwo said:
My internet is too fast.


Said no one ever.
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My internet is too expensive,

Said almost everyone.


Problem is lack of competition. Only solution I see is to force competition.

If 90% of the home in the area have 3 competitive choices, then no problem. Otherwise there needs to be price controls, just like any other utility/monopoly.
 
sadly the novelty is that there are places in the USA where the residents could benefit from a better class of internet than the extremely limited DSL, satellite or cellular connections that are their only options and they don't even get a chance at having true broadband but they still have to pay the same amounts of money as if they did.

Then there are the places were because of the lack of competition you can have something like 1.5mbps dsl or 25mbps cable internet for the same cost but your neighbors a few miles away can get 100mbps service from a few providers.

While it is true that not everyone have a legitimate "need" for say gigabit residential service , it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and put in the fiber infrastructure to service anyone that might wants it.

There was point in time that people didn't need electricity but were still made an effort to wire everyone. The internet isn't going away and going forward everyone will benefit from having a good affordable high speed connection but there is no benefit from belittling the usefulness of the advancements of the speeds available for consumers because of a lack of information as to why someone would want better speed connections.

Could you imagine telling Wall Street and Silicon Valley they are a novelty, to just brush their needs for "ultra-fast" connections off as excessive.
 
prava said:
Wrong.

They don't do it because of the lack of competition. Why would you install fiber when your customers will still be your customers? You won't spend hundreds of millions so that you can increase the fees by $10 a month. You do it when you want to grab as many users as possible. You need competition for it to work..
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You said I was wrong and then said the same point I was trying to make. If you have one company that services your neighborhood, then another company isn't going to come in and lay cable to compete with them if they aren't assured X amount of people are going to switch from that company to pay for their investment. It is much more lucrative to expand your network to new areas where you will be a monopoly. If you are going to dig and lay cable, lay it where you will get the most return, where there is no competition.
 
So I assume this guy only uses dial up at his home then, I mean clearly he's practicing what he preaches right....?

</sarcasm>
 
Kor said:
So I assume this guy only uses dial up at his home then, I mean clearly he's practicing what he preaches right....?

</sarcasm>
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He mostly only uses equipment and connections that *we* pay for, which are some of the best in the country I'm sure.
 
mastaBlasta said:
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.
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I live in Texas and have to deal with this everyday. People sporting misinformation and strait up lies as fact. I don't consider myself a Republican or a Democrat, but try to focus in on the issues that actually matter to me/ my neighborhood/ my city/ my county/ my state/ my country. When I talk 'politics' with someone I try to engage them on specific issues, what ever ones matter most to them, but all anyone can regurgitate up at me is how its this persons fault or that persons fault or this groups fault or that groups fault etc. etc...
 
what a surprise not even 2 months after Wheeler steps down everything goes into the dumpster..
 
I wish we had a system like South Korea. The grid is independently owned and operated. The operators of the grid then lease nodes to ISPs. The ISPs purchase X number of nodes based on how much bandwidth they want to offer their customers. Because of this marketing structure, there are many ISPs to choose from. Prices are low and bandwidth offered is high. This provides a healthy market with lots of competition which is good for the consumer.
 
NeghVar said:
I wish we had a system like South Korea. The grid is independently owned and operated. The operators of the grid then lease nodes to ISPs. The ISPs purchase X number of nodes based on how much bandwidth they want to offer their customers. Because of this marketing structure, there are many ISPs to choose from. Prices are low and bandwidth offered is high. This provides a healthy market with lots of competition which is good for the consumer.
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South Korea is the size of Indiana...aka the 38th largest state.
 
kirbyrj said:
South Korea is the size of Indiana...aka the 38th largest state.
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i mean it still could work if it was done at a state level instead of federal level. but then again we've seen what happens when states already ignore laws put in place to stop exactly whats happening right now with ISP's controlling huge regions of cities/states so that no competition can actually come in.
 
nutzo said:
My internet is too expensive,

Said almost everyone.


Problem is lack of competition. Only solution I see is to force competition.

If 90% of the home in the area have 3 competitive choices, then no problem. Otherwise there needs to be price controls, just like any other utility/monopoly.
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i'm at a pretty good equilibrium between what i get and what i pay as an internet consumer.
 
nutzo said:
My internet is too expensive,

Said almost everyone.


Problem is lack of competition. Only solution I see is to force competition.

If 90% of the home in the area have 3 competitive choices, then no problem. Otherwise there needs to be price controls, just like any other utility/monopoly.
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They do this in many countries, with great success, by mandating line sharing or local loop un-bundling. Basically the owner of a line has to lease it to others at competitive rates. Some areas have hundreds of options to choose from there, we wish we had even just 3, how sad is that?

Doubt that's gonna fly here in the current political environment, was hard enough passing the watered down net neutrality stuff when Wheeler was in charge.
 
wizzi01 said:
The commissioner was nominated by Obama.
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To be fair, only three commissioners may be members of the same political party as the president. Ie. Obama can only appoint 3 Democrats. He has to by law have another party be present, IE. 2 Republicans, hence Pai being a commissioner. The U.S. President designates one of the commissioners to serve as chairman, Pai wasn't Obama's chairman.
 
Or idk, let people - locally - figure out how they want to do it. Here in Longmont, Colorado LCP (city's not-for-profit electric and broadband services utility) is nearly done installing Nextlight - fiber broadband. For $50/month I get 1 gig up and 1 gig down. Installation paid for by the tax payers of the city.

Take out profits (ie ways to make the rich richer), take out monopolies (a government can be argued to be a monopoly but the people have say/control unlike a corp), and it's all local so my neighbors are the ones I talk to for support/install/etc.

http://www.longmontcolorado.gov/dep...ngmont-power-communications/broadband-service
 
The lack of competition is due to city and state politics. There is good reason why Comcast spends nearly 90% of their political donations on city and state candidates. They donate, their candidate wins, and the politician sticks it to us by preventing competition. They make up ordinances that won't allow any companies but the local monopoly holders to start installing infrastructure, or delay the infrastructure projects by modifying and denying permits. This keeps the cable providers in a monopoly.

What we need is to pay attention to who Comcast and other companies like them are donating to, and vote against them. We NEED more churn in local political offices so that competition is allowed and small ISPs will start and flourish. Then we'll see changes in the availability of higher internet speeds.
 
travisty said:
Or idk, let people - locally - figure out how they want to do it. Here in Longmont, Colorado LCP (city's not-for-profit electric and broadband services utility) is nearly done installing Nextlight - fiber broadband. For $50/month I get 1 gig up and 1 gig down. Installation paid for by the tax payers of the city.

Take out profits (ie ways to make the rich richer), take out monopolies (a government can be argued to be a monopoly but the people have say/control unlike a corp), and it's all local so my neighbors are the ones I talk to for support/install/etc.

http://www.longmontcolorado.gov/dep...ngmont-power-communications/broadband-service
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Yeah, sure, $50/month direct, plus $200/month in extra taxes to support it.
 
prava said:
Wrong.
They don't do it because of the lack of competition.
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Ok.. why is the idea wrong? Just curious:
prava said:
we have 2 providers that installed fiber pretty much anywhere that you have houses next to each other. On top of that, we already had like half a dozen providers offering copper up to 30mbps. Now I have unlimited 300/300.
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So your reason why competition doesn't work is because you have 2 top providers in a small island provinding fiber and 6 other providers offering lower cost copper up to 30mpps?

I think you stated the case when competition does work very well.

Here in the states having fiber is extremely rare. You have the telephone company who offers jacked up prices for 30/30 and a cable provider who offers something like 15/5 for around 60-75$ a month.

The main point you have to understand is that both companies, and sometimes there's only one company gets the local government to sign a no-competition contract so that the local company will reject any other providers trying to offer some competition. There's tons of collusion happening between the companies where they do not compete with one another.

dsl is still a thing here where you can get 128kbps for 30$ a month.

To most people in the states, your little island is in a different dimension in terms of internet speed.
 
NeghVar said:
I wish we had a system like South Korea. The grid is independently owned and operated. The operators of the grid then lease nodes to ISPs. The ISPs purchase X number of nodes based on how much bandwidth they want to offer their customers. Because of this marketing structure, there are many ISPs to choose from. Prices are low and bandwidth offered is high. This provides a healthy market with lots of competition which is good for the consumer.
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If it were like this then we wouldn't have monopolies. How would the poor ISPs survive. :bigtears:
 
dgingeri said:
Yeah, sure, $50/month direct, plus $200/month in extra taxes to support it.
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Incorrect. The $50 actually does pay for it plus the loan that was taken out with the city. IIRC as long as the uptake was greater than 30% there would be enough revenue to pay salaries with enough for payment into the debt. Uptake I believe is around 60% to this point.

I was too broad in my original post, here's more details:

The NextLight build-out project is funded by a $40.3 million bond the city issued in 2014, which will be paid back by NextLight ratepayers over time.

...

A feasibility study in 2013 predicted that in the areas of the city that have been through a full NextLight marketing study, 27 percent of households would opt to pay for NextLight internet.

Instead, LPC is seeing a take rate of 56 percent in those areas.

But that means that LPC needs more money for contractors, materials and other costs such as bandwidth, McGill told council.

...

But, the extra customers means that LPC is projecting an extra $3 million in revenue over time, allowing the NextLight broadband fund to pay back the Electric and Broadband Utility Fund with interest, staff said.

http://www.timescall.com/longmont-l...nt-council-gives-first-ok-7m-nextlight-budget​

It's amazing how cheap internet can be (for the customer) when profit is removed :)
 
Mong00se said:
I live in Texas and have to deal with this everyday. People sporting misinformation and strait up lies as fact. I don't consider myself a Republican or a Democrat, but try to focus in on the issues that actually matter to me/ my neighborhood/ my city/ my county/ my state/ my country. When I talk 'politics' with someone I try to engage them on specific issues, what ever ones matter most to them, but all anyone can regurgitate up at me is how its this persons fault or that persons fault or this groups fault or that groups fault etc. etc...
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It gets depressing, especially when the issues you care about neither party is doing anything substantial to fix, nor has plans to.
 
tetris42 said:
It gets depressing, especially when the issues you care about neither party is doing anything substantial to fix, nor has plans to.
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The American people are not interested in fixing issues. They are fixated on using issues to justify a stance.

Let's all make a stance !
 
Hey at least he's not saying that Americans are not ready for ultra fast broadband and wouldn't utilise it even if it was free, like the government-appointed head of the Australian National Broadband said recently: http://www.news.com.au/technology/o...s/news-story/2271ef7a1b9095ba21fe154a1bb0eb21

The current government in Australia has crawled so far up Rupert Murdoch's ass that they can taste what he has for breakfast each morning. Murdoch, of course, runs Foxtel, the only pay cable TV company in Australia. You can get fast internet if you want to pay for cable tv as well. Otherwise you're shit out of luck. The NBN is not fast internet since this government killed it at the behest of Murdoch. It also stops people streaming videos in competition with Foxtel. I'm currently stuck on ADSL 1. I get, at max, 175 kilobytes/sec download. Mean time the NBN chief is loving those Foxtel donations.

RAAAAAAGE
 
westrock2000 said:
Population density of this island?
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~231/km^2 --- 599/sq mi


Cobra said:
You said I was wrong and then said the same point I was trying to make. If you have one company that services your neighborhood, then another company isn't going to come in and lay cable to compete with them if they aren't assured X amount of people are going to switch from that company to pay for their investment. It is much more lucrative to expand your network to new areas where you will be a monopoly. If you are going to dig and lay cable, lay it where you will get the most return, where there is no competition.
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It is exactly the opposite.

On any given neighbour (I'm talking about my place, of course) you have 6 (or more) companies offering pretty much the same services. So, one of them decides to lay down fiber... do you know what happens? Everybody goes to the one that offers fiber (so they upgrade their package) and the rest of the companies lose a ton of customers. What do the other competing companies, then? In this case, they make joint-ventures to lay fiber together and split the investment costs. So they compete or lose money (because they lose customers).

In here you can't expand to new areas. They do not exist. There is coverage pretty much everywhere (so everybody already has internet)... so companies have to invest to take customers from other companies. In my street they installed the fiber this summer and I know that at least half the neighbours went to fiber. We have 50/50 for 50€/month and 300/300 for ~60€/month. The speed is real because I get sustained download speeds of 39MB/s while downloading steam games, to name a good example.

All in all, the only way to force companies to invest is when they have to invest or lose customers. As far as I know the USA is riddled with areas where you only have a single or maybe two providers. Heck, wasn't there a huge buyout in the industry not too long ago? I thought they were going to save a ton in costs and other stuff but it ends up that those companies are seldom offered together in the same area, so they are in the same industry but they do not compete.

Hypergreatthing said:
Ok.. why is the idea wrong? Just curious:

So your reason why competition doesn't work is because you have 2 top providers in a small island provinding fiber and 6 other providers offering lower cost copper up to 30mpps?

I think you stated the case when competition does work very well.

Here in the states having fiber is extremely rare. You have the telephone company who offers jacked up prices for 30/30 and a cable provider who offers something like 15/5 for around 60-75$ a month.

The main point you have to understand is that both companies, and sometimes there's only one company gets the local government to sign a no-competition contract so that the local company will reject any other providers trying to offer some competition. There's tons of collusion happening between the companies where they do not compete with one another.

dsl is still a thing here where you can get 128kbps for 30$ a month.

To most people in the states, your little island is in a different dimension in terms of internet speed.
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Mmmmm. What I was pointing out (or trying) is that in my small island competition works (and thus we got fiber) and in the USA it does not (and you have shitty speeds and caps).

YOU STILL HAVE 128KBPS DSL?

Also... we do not have "fiber only" companies. Most companies offer a wide arrange of services... depending on your exact adress. So, the company wasn't new in the neighborhood. We were on a copper line @ 20mbps with company A, and suddently company B decided to install fiber and offer fiber services (they were offering copper before). So, we swapped. Heck we didn't even have to pay a cent for installation or router (6 months of mandatory stay, is all), and they had a 50%-off for the first 6 months. So 300/300 for 31€/month (21% VAT included) for the first 6 months, then 62€/month.

So, because all companies can pretty much operate anywhere...and do so (they simply offer different speeds based on your location) as of now, updating their lines is up to them. Sure they need permits and shit but every single town is more than happy to oblige as it is something better for everybody.

The only thing they need is to ask for permission when installing shit in condos because the actual lines run on the facades of the buildings. So they owners need to sign an authorisation. Nothing else.

Now, things change when you live in the countryside. If you do, they require you to pay for the connection fees. And they can be substantial. Heck, some areas still have no power-grid because they demand 6 figures to bring the actual lines to their houses. But those are far away places.
 
...yes...full control and regulation was given to the FCC via the scheme called "net neutrality"...your 'user tax' will be showing up on your bill in the near future...once again the great unwashed don't know what they asked for , funny really
 
Cobalt35 said:
Hey at least he's not saying that Americans are not ready for ultra fast broadband and wouldn't utilise it even if it was free, like the government-appointed head of the Australian National Broadband said recently: http://www.news.com.au/technology/o...s/news-story/2271ef7a1b9095ba21fe154a1bb0eb21

The current government in Australia has crawled so far up Rupert Murdoch's ass that they can taste what he has for breakfast each morning. Murdoch, of course, runs Foxtel, the only pay cable TV company in Australia. You can get fast internet if you want to pay for cable tv as well. Otherwise you're shit out of luck. The NBN is not fast internet since this government killed it at the behest of Murdoch. It also stops people streaming videos in competition with Foxtel. I'm currently stuck on ADSL 1. I get, at max, 175 kilobytes/sec download. Mean time the NBN chief is loving those Foxtel donations.

RAAAAAAGE
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hahaha...move
 
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