Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

fcc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 296 posts

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#31

Post by danachow »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #18
happyopossum wrote: post #2

100/20 is definitely an improvement, and is probably a reasonable minimum bar to set. I'm sure most of us have much higher speed connections, but I know I rarely take my 1Gb pipe over 10% of that... Heck, 2 TVs streaming 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb...

> 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb Not sure what bit rate TV is at, but one 4K YouTube stream can take up to 68Mbps, and 8K even more. We're on 400Mbps, and even then I manage to block internet for others when I download a large file at full speed.

> We're on 400Mbps, and even then I manage to block internet for others when I download a large file at full speed.

That's more of a router/QoS issue. A large download shouldn't negatively affect quality for other uses, especially VoIP. If the place you're downloading from has a pipe bigger than yours and can saturate your bandwidth you're going to need to implement some kind of rate-limiting/queue management.

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#32

Post by cyral »

superkuh wrote: post #26

The problem, in the USA for most people, is Comcast. Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Upload speed has stagnated. I uploaded as fast in 2003 as I do now in 2022. And as others have said, it's not so much about 1 fast provider as many providers and choice. In my comcast monopoly my plan started at $60/mo in 2011 and without any changes on my end and no change in my upload speed that price has in…

I was curious about the upload issue recently and learned that it is because of limitations of the old cable infrastructure. You presumably receive your internet over coax (which can still provide really good download speeds, I was surprised when my gigabit internet package came and it only had a coax port instead of fiber). Cable TV is pretty much all downloads, with only a small portion of the bandwidth reserved for uploads, since uploading is only needed for authenticating your subscription, pay-per-view purchases, etc. Unfortunately there isn't an easy way to re-allocate the upload bandwidth, because this splitting is implemented with actual hardware frequency filters that are buried and on poles all over the US.

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#33

Post by kalleboo »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #18
happyopossum wrote: post #2

100/20 is definitely an improvement, and is probably a reasonable minimum bar to set. I'm sure most of us have much higher speed connections, but I know I rarely take my 1Gb pipe over 10% of that... Heck, 2 TVs streaming 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb...

> 4k during a zoom call would be fine on 100Mb Not sure what bit rate TV is at, but one 4K YouTube stream can take up to 68Mbps, and 8K even more. We're on 400Mbps, and even then I manage to block internet for others when I download a large file at full speed.

I don't think I've ever seen a 4K YouTube stream over 15 Mbit, where do you find a 70 Mbit stream? Even the king of streaming bitrate, Apple TV, is said to peak at 30 Mbps

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#34

Post by harikb »

cyral wrote: post #32
superkuh wrote: post #26

The problem, in the USA for most people, is Comcast. Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Upload speed has stagnated. I uploaded as fast in 2003 as I do now in 2022. And as others have said, it's not so much about 1 fast provider as many providers and choice. In my comcast monopoly my plan started at $60/mo in 2011 and without any changes on my end and no change in my upload speed that price has in…

I was curious about the upload issue recently and learned that it is because of limitations of the old cable infrastructure. You presumably receive your internet over coax (which can still provide really good download speeds, I was surprised when my gigabit internet package came and it only had a coax port instead of fiber). Cable TV is pretty much all downloads, with only a small portion of the bandwidth reserved fo…

As far as I have heard, they could choose to use N out of M channels for either upload or download and they are choosing to keep it the way it is. Probably they need to keep it that way for other reasons (their own cable-TV signal goes through it). But I know nothing about the electronics/signal-processing involved, so I could be totally wrong.

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#35

Post by giantg2 »

simplyinfinity wrote: post #30
giantg2 wrote: post #13

No. This is insanity. Faster speed will mean that providers will charge more. I am perfectly fine with 25 Mbps. I was fine with 10 Mbps too until they eliminated that level and I was forced to pay more. Edit: why disagree?

I pay 15$ for 500/300 megabit. It's a monopoly that gouges your prices, not competition or mandated high speeds.

Yeah, and if they don't fix the monopoly (this rule doesn't), then it will only exacerbate the current conditions (monopoly gouging us).

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#36

Post by harikb »

DrewADesign wrote: post #20
metadat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be eligible for ATT [gigabit] fiber? Could be worth a shot. (Unless you're in far-east Menlo) IME the fiber service is faster more reliable than Comcast, but AT&T support is the absolute worst, super incompetent (across the entire company, not just U-verse internet). It's fine as long as you don't need any support and don't try to deactivate anything, but if your account gets messed up it can literally take…

> (Unless you're in far-east Menlo) Unless they're in far-east Menlo or like 99.99999% of the rest of the world. While bay area folks are certainly heavily-represented here, the commenters come from all corners of the globe.

They were simply replying to the parent post, which specifically mentioned Menlo park :)

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#38

Post by xahrepap »

rascul wrote: post #29
superkuh wrote: post #26

The problem, in the USA for most people, is Comcast. Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Upload speed has stagnated. I uploaded as fast in 2003 as I do now in 2022. And as others have said, it's not so much about 1 fast provider as many providers and choice. In my comcast monopoly my plan started at $60/mo in 2011 and without any changes on my end and no change in my upload speed that price has in…

> Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Until the power company ran fiber earlier this year, the only wired option here was 3Mbps DSL from AT&T. AT&T buried fiber all over the area (including in front of my house) years ago, but it sits there unused.

Same where I am. Most of the city has competition because it’s most new developments out here and a few fiber companies were able to get in the ground early. My neighborhood is older so we only have Comcast. But Comcast buried fiber here to “future proof” ages ago, they just haven’t lit it up. And they’re the only company who got their hardware in the ground. So I’m stuck on their cable.

As it turns out the service here is good, so I shouldn’t complain. But it’s still frustrating that they are just sitting on fiber and not using it. And also that there’s no competition where I am.

If I ever move, then I’ll know better and pick a house with fiber already. :/

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#39

Post by nfiedel »

Am surprised to see the pushback asserting this will cause prices to rise. This speed was practical on comcast's cable system back in 2007 (when we got it) and probably earlier. There is a wealth of evidence that higher bandwidth has minimal to marginal costs for typical residential usage.

On to the actual proposal, it raises the minimums from: * Down: 25mbps --> 100mbps * Up: 3mbps --> 20mbps

As a head of household of 5, I carefully monitored and managed our internet usage during covid, and upgraded from comcast to AT&T fiber (1g symmetric). I can say with high certainty that the previous minimum (25/3) would be severely inadequate for a family of 5. This bump to 100/20, while not amazing, is a good step in the right direction. It would make 5 people working/learning remotely at least _possible_.

TLDR: The tech is cheap and decades old. There should be minimal cost to ISPs. The best arguments in this thread, imho, are that we should strive for even higher.

Re: FCC proposes to increase minimum broadband speeds to 100 Mbps

#40

Post by Stratoscope »

metadat wrote: post #5
gnicholas wrote: post #4

I'd rather have two providers that offers 25Mbps than one that offers 100Mbps. I don't need 100, or even 50. But Comcast has been jacking up their prices, along with increasing the minimum speed available, for years. They respond to government regulations like these. I'm now paying 2x what I used to (from $25 to $50/mo), and getting 2x the speed. But I don't want to be forced to buy 2x the speed (or even faster, as t…

You might be eligible for ATT [gigabit] fiber? Could be worth a shot. (Unless you're in far-east Menlo) IME the fiber service is faster more reliable than Comcast, but AT&T support is the absolute worst, super incompetent (across the entire company, not just U-verse internet). It's fine as long as you don't need any support and don't try to deactivate anything, but if your account gets messed up it can literally take…

One trick for better AT&T support here on the Peninsula may be to sign up through Sonic instead of directly with AT&T. In some areas like SF, Sonic runs their own fiber, in others they are an AT&T reseller - with the wrinkle that Sonic handles all support with their own local staff. I have been told that they have better insight and connections into the internal AT&T systems than AT&T's own support team. I haven't had much need for support, so I can't vouch for that, but it wouldn't surprise me.

I'm in Flood Triangle (between Menlo Oaks and 101), and AT&T ran fiber though our neighborhoods last year.

I had good Comcast service, at least after I reported some intermittent outages and they finally sent someone out to test the connection and he said "I'm surprised you're getting any service at all! Your drop has been spliced a few times. I'm calling my buddy with a bucket truck and we will run you a new drop."

(A "drop" is the cable that connects your home to the main cable line.)

After that it was solid. Had gigabit downloads, but uploads were limited to 30 megabit. Comcast is in a bind here, as they built out their infrastructure in an era of "on-demand television" where download speed was the important thing and upload was just a simple control channel. So they have hardware filters everywhere to separate the upload and download frequencies, and naturally they gave more spectrum to the downloads.

In my work I often need to upload large files of 15GB or more. So when AT&T came through I signed up and it is a huge difference: ten minutes to upload one of those files instead of two hours (with people waiting on it).

Post reply on HN