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FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

arstechnica.com

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Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#61

Post by oneplane »

rayiner wrote: post #3
marpstar wrote: post #2

In my area (Midwest USA), you can only get 100Mbps or more from either A) Cable company. In my case Mediacom. B) Fiber, which is also offered by Mediacom as well as some rural providers to select locations. DSL is barely 20Mbps around here, and you can't even get 10Mbps service in some spots two miles off US 20. As someone who'd like to buy a home in the country, I find this lack of coverage a much bigger issue. Forg…

Much of my county doesn’t even have water and sewer pipes. People just spend the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars needed to build septic systems and wells and accept that is the trade off for living in the country.

In my country there are no houses with septic tanks or wells. I guess it really depends on your location and government on how infrastructure is handled.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#62

Post by dragonwriter »

oneplane wrote: post #59
MrVitaliy wrote: post #54

It's not broadband for me, it's monthly data caps. I can stream 4 different netflix shows, on 50Mbps, and blow through 1TB monthly cap in 3 weeks. No point of getting even faster connection.

Where in the world do you live that you still have data caps?

IIRC, most US broadband providers have published data caps (and had secret unpublished ones before the FCC’s transparency rules, the one bit of the earliest Net Neutrality regulation that wasn't struck down, forced them to be disclosed.)

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#63

Post by mhays »

woodruffw wrote: post #55
rhino369 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could be solved with better QoS on the router right? Obviously a download from a good server will saturate a 100mbps line, but so what? Other than video games and massive file backups, 25mbit is fairly fast. I pay for faster, but it's only a marginal improvement.

Better QoS on consumer routers would definitely help, but it's not a panacea -- ballooning website sizes also lead to bursty network conditions, and I wouldn't be surprised if my router's QoS is configured to prioritize HTTP(S) connections. Same goes for automatic updates. Edit: I meant to add this: We have the ability to provide (or at least develop) 100mbps connections to the vast majority of Americans, and we reco…

Your edit is essentially the point of my original post. Yes, if we can get 100mbps for the vast majority of Americans, that would be awesome. But, if the vast majority of Americans would be fine right now with 10-15-20mbps, wouldn't it be better to analyze our national broadband capabilities based on that benchmark? From what I understand, 100mbps is overkill, so why use that as a benchmark?

I come at this with the thinking that, it's not "us" that's building out the infrastructure, but the telco companies. So, really what we are doing is analyzing the build-outs telcos are doing, and judging whether it is good enough or not. Is it really fair to say that, if there aren't 3+ telcos providing 100mbps, but there are 3+ providing 15mbps, that's not good enough?

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#64

Post by nodesocket »

I recently moved to Nashville and signed up for the AT&T gigabit offering which is 1Gbps up and down with unlimited data for $80 a month (what a deal).

Wireless devices cap out at around 400Mbps on Speedtest.net because they hit wireless throughput maximums. My iMac which is attached to my AirPort Time Capsule via CAT6 pushes around 700Mbps up and down. I'm fairly certain I am not being capped, just that Speedtest.net POP's probably can't push that much bandwidth to max out my 1Gbps connection.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#65

Post by woodruffw »

mhays wrote: post #63
woodruffw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better QoS on consumer routers would definitely help, but it's not a panacea -- ballooning website sizes also lead to bursty network conditions, and I wouldn't be surprised if my router's QoS is configured to prioritize HTTP(S) connections. Same goes for automatic updates. Edit: I meant to add this: We have the ability to provide (or at least develop) 100mbps connections to the vast majority of Americans, and we reco…

Your edit is essentially the point of my original post. Yes, if we can get 100mbps for the vast majority of Americans, that would be awesome. But, if the vast majority of Americans would be fine right now with 10-15-20mbps, wouldn't it be better to analyze our national broadband capabilities based on that benchmark? From what I understand, 100mbps is overkill, so why use that as a benchmark? I come at this with the t…

Well, I disagree that the vast majority of Americans are fine with 10/15/20mbps. They might get by with it, but I'm sure they notice their streams buffer or drop in quality when they do (or their system does) something bursty.

In light of the obscene amount of money that taxpayers have sunk into ISPs, there's no need for that. They may be the ones building the infrastructure, but they're taking advantage of us along the way.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#66

Post by ehPReth »

scottwernervt wrote: post #34
juliangoldsmith wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a few years ago TWC was going to offer 300mbps cable service, and then the Spectrum merger cancelled that expansion. Are you sure they don't offer that? I live in Charlotte, and that's what I have.

They are also bringing gigabit by end of 2018: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/chart...

Not sure I’d call 940/35Mbps gigabit (better providers use that to refer to 1/1Gbps — Charter’s marketing wank doesn’t sit too well :/)

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#67

Post by Animats »

mjevans wrote: post #23
cortesoft wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, latency is never going to change, no matter what plan you use. You can't really sell a faster speed of light....

It might actually, mostly due to buffer bloat on some modem stacks. The anti-buffer bloat stuff from the recent DOCSIS (I forget if it was 3.0 or the one after) are supposed to help a LOT with latency issues. Not as good as fiber but close enough that global distance issues become dominant again.

The "buffer bloat" guy has been useful. I've been arguing against big FIFO queues for decades, but he's more into PR and visibility than I am. Any place you have a major choke point, especially home router uplink connections, you need QoS, or fair queuing, or something, or queue delays will go through the roof. At least send the ACKs first.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#68

Post by bhauer »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #47

I used to ask why anyone would ever need 100 Mbps, until I got 100 Mbps. Then I said the same about gigabit, until I got gigabit. Now I've moved from New Zealand, with its amazing internet infrastructure, to Australia, where I'm lucky to get 10 Mbps, and it keeps dropping out. I couldn't even download a folder from Dropbox last night because my connection was too slow and flaky. It should be the priority for governme…

> I used to ask why anyone would ever need 100 Mbps, until I got 100 Mbps. Then I said the same about gigabit, until I got gigabit.

I wish more technologists who have become tolerant of stagnation in technology would remember that. A great deal of modern computing feels "good enough" when given only superficial thought. But replaced by something truly improved, the old rightfully feels outdated and decidedly inadequate.

The same was true with low-density displays. Many years back, I would plea in vain with vendors to give me high-density displays and it seemed everyone who overheard would say, "I don't get it; ~72 dpi is good enough!" Fast forward a decade and those people today would not surrender their high-DPI displays.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#69

Post by ktsmith »

nodesocket wrote: post #64

I recently moved to Nashville and signed up for the AT&T gigabit offering which is 1Gbps up and down with unlimited data for $80 a month (what a deal). Wireless devices cap out at around 400Mbps on Speedtest.net because they hit wireless throughput maximums. My iMac which is attached to my AirPort Time Capsule via CAT6 pushes around 700Mbps up and down. I'm fairly certain I am not being capped, just that Speedtest.ne…

Your contract with AT&T probably only guarantees you 70% of the advertised speed. I've never had an issue with speedtest.net POPs being able to handle gigabit tests. I have lots of experience with underperforming AT&T connections of all kinds. I would try another speed test site if you think that is the bottleneck.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#70

Post by ktsmith »

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #24
LogicX wrote: post #5

Surprisingly, in Myrtle Beach, SC we have multiple high speed providers choices: HTC (as in htcinc.net, a local telco cooperative offering gigabit fiber), or Spectrum, who just minutes ago I heard for the first time that their new default tier in our area is 100mbps. Not sure if they go much hiher though, because a few years ago TWC was going to offer 300mbps cable service, and then the Spectrum merger cancelled that…

>a few years ago TWC was going to offer 300mbps cable service, and then the Spectrum merger cancelled that expansion. Are you sure they don't offer that? I live in Charlotte, and that's what I have.

300 down should be the new Ultra tier everywhere Spectrum has upgraded the base speed to 100.
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