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100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

arstechnica.com

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Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#31

Post by rayiner »

Panino wrote: post #3

> The funding is going to a mix of cable, fiber, and fixed wireless providers, plus SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. I think cable providers should be left out. They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. They can just use the free money they've already been given. Instead, the funding should go to existing munipical fiber ISPs to expand t…

> They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money.

Very little government money has been spent on broadband. Federal funding for broadband dates back only to the Obama administration. And cable companies have largely not received this money. You’re thinking of something else.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#32

Post by mfkp »

viraptor wrote: post #24
totalZero wrote: post #15

Imagine how good our network technology policy would be if the Senate weren't run by septagenarians and octogenarian. I fear that data caps for home internet will become standard. There is no technological reason for these caps. For wireless, they could be defended by arguing that companies only get to use so much spectrum because of FCC laws. But the only limit for home internet is the ISP's willingness to deploy eq…

There is one reason for some caps, which is that you'll always get oversubscription in the cities, and the caps could reflect that to prevent 100% utilisation. They don't have to be so small that people actually think about them. Basically set it at 1TB for residential for the lowest plan and forget about it.

I don't think you realize how fast 1tb of data goes when you have a family of 5 all doing zoom calls and remote learning all day, then streaming video (youtube, live tv, netflix) at night.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#33

Post by Blikkentrekker »

I find terms such as “broadband” and “high definition” that need to be updated every so often to be incredibly useless.

Numbers and units exist for a reason. If one wish to speak of 100 Mib/s, then one should simply do so. — that way, I, and everyone else, knows exactly what is going on.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#34

Post by dheera »

markovbot wrote: post #29
Panino wrote: post #3

> The funding is going to a mix of cable, fiber, and fixed wireless providers, plus SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. I think cable providers should be left out. They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. They can just use the free money they've already been given. Instead, the funding should go to existing munipical fiber ISPs to expand t…

for-profit corporations should not own our communications infrastructure.

I don't see an inherent problem with for-profit companies owning infrastructure, but it needs to not be monopolized and it needs to not be owned by a bunch of public market shareholders and hedge funds who don't even use the product. Utility monopolies and public companies rarely put customers first.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#35

Post by blunte »

blunte wrote: post #19
blunte wrote: post #18

Yes they should, but what will happen is websites and apps will get fatter and sloppier until the end result is slow, laggy performance. It's a bit like doubling your salary and increasing your spending by more than double. That seems to be how website and app development behaves. Imagine if bandwidth increased, latency decreased (approaching theoritical minimums), and websites/apps were built with a strict (but appr…

Fascinating. Within seconds of posting my parent, the negatives rolled in. I guess my post was scanned as saying "no, don't increase bandwidth". Far from it.

There's something going on here that is organized toward some goal, but it doesn't make sense. Usually troll farms work for financial interests, but my comment wasn't taking any side. If the votes came from thinking HN readers, I would have expected refutory responses.

(meta) It's reasonable that we don't see who downvoted us, but it would be very interesting to see the karma of each account that downvoted.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#37

Post by rayiner »

totalZero wrote: post #15

Imagine how good our network technology policy would be if the Senate weren't run by septagenarians and octogenarian. I fear that data caps for home internet will become standard. There is no technological reason for these caps. For wireless, they could be defended by arguing that companies only get to use so much spectrum because of FCC laws. But the only limit for home internet is the ISP's willingness to deploy eq…

Are millennials any different? Outside tech, I don’t know anybody who cares about broadband as an aside, except when pushing a different political angle such as inequality.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#38

Post by kryogen1c »

Lets try and suss out some of the multiple issues with US internet:

-regulating ISPs as a free market is, to be hyperbolic, a disaster. there is effectively a monopoly in most parts of the country.

-25/3 Mbps is a very reasonable speed for most people. the issue is that its provided on a best effort basis that is never maintained for long, if at all. netflix says thats enough to stream UHD[0]

-FTA: "Those data points likely undercount the number of unserved Americans because the FCC lets ISPs count an entire census block as served even if it can serve just one home in the block" hilarious - what else is there to say.

-FTA: "The senators are also frustrated by differing standards across agencies. [...] the FCC defines [...] Alternatively, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines" why is this the federal government's job again? the internet is clearly not an enumerated power. is this the interstate commerce clause that keeps on giving in action again? i think decentralizing federal power would help alleviate a lot of the existential dread vis a vi corruption that many americans are feeling.

all in all, this reeks of regulatory capture to me. if we're gonna have a serious discussion about internet infrastructure, i think the starting point is how we classify ISPs and where in the city-state-federal hierarchy the responsibility lies. changing a 25 to a 100 is a cool bullet on a resume, but i dont think this is the low handing fruit here.

[0]https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#39

Post by Arrath »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #33

I find terms such as “broadband” and “high definition” that need to be updated every so often to be incredibly useless. Numbers and units exist for a reason. If one wish to speak of 100 Mib/s, then one should simply do so. — that way, I, and everyone else, knows exactly what is going on.

I ran into this on a government contract that wanted videos of certain things submitted in, per specification, "high definition digital video" okay 1080/60 it is.

Oh, no that's too big for them to email to their antiquated consultants, turns out they want 15MiB max video clips.

Well to do that I had to step down to 720/30. Which they then complained wasn't clear enough for their uses. Three rounds of RFI later I'm back as square one, they've defined HD as 1080/60 and they say they'll figure out how to distribute the clips. Just annoying as all get out when they could have started with clear language (numbers) to begin with.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#40

Post by chromaton »

rayiner wrote: post #31
Panino wrote: post #3

> The funding is going to a mix of cable, fiber, and fixed wireless providers, plus SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. I think cable providers should be left out. They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. They can just use the free money they've already been given. Instead, the funding should go to existing munipical fiber ISPs to expand t…

> They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. Very little government money has been spent on broadband. Federal funding for broadband dates back only to the Obama administration. And cable companies have largely not received this money. You’re thinking of something else.

To avoid another repeated thread, just read this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556

I just realized that you were posting on that thread as well.

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